Font Management in OS X, by Kurt Lang

Last updated October 15, 2012

This article deals with font usage in OS X Panther 10.3.x through Lion 10.8.x. It's main purpose is to show you wherefonts are located on your system and which can be removed. The idea being to keep your fonts as lean as possible andto avoid font conflicts. These issues would benefit prepress operators and designers the most, but can clear up fontissues for most users. As an example, if you are having problems getting the correct version of Helvetica, Courier orother fonts to show up in your applications, you are likely experiencing font conflicts.

Table of contents:

Preface: Understanding terminology used in this article.

Sections:

1. Required fonts.2. Known issues with disabled fonts.3. Fonts installed by Microsoft Office.4. What to do with Suitcase. 5. Controlling Helvetica and Courier fonts for prepress. 6. Font folder locations. Using Font Book.7. Required fonts for OS 9 (Classic).8. Various other fonts your can move or remove.9. Do you need a font manager?10. What is a font suitcase and why do we have them?11. FFIL and LWFN. What are they and which is which?12. External vs. internal font names.13. What is a font conflict?14. Are you a good font, or a bad font?15. Fonts you can and cannot use in OS X.16. Font manager reviews.17. How to handle font caches.

Appendix:

Font 911. What to do in font emergencies.Determining if fonts are causing problems with applications.Reinstalling your OS X supplied fonts.

Preface:

I first want to mention the notation of font locations. This should help new computer users and those unfamiliar withstandard notation understand how to navigate to the folders mentioned throughout this article.

I can't tell you exactly what the path to your home account looks like since I don't know your short user name, so hereare some handy notes of reference.

A file specification is the entire path from the root of the volume it resides on to the end of the file name. For example,here is the file specification for the Terminal application:

/Applications/Utilities/Terminal

This is known as a hierarchical file specification in geek terminology, but it's called a canonical filename for short.

/ The beginning forward slash (as in the example to the Terminal application) of a file specification is always the rootlevel of your boot volume.

~/ The tilde-forward slash pair is always your home directory (folder), i.e., the home folder of the current user loginsession.

So in most cases, the path to the Fonts folder in your home user account would be ~/Library/Fonts/. Which, if you start

by double clicking the icon of the boot drive on the desktop, the path can also be presented as/Users/your_user_account/Library/Fonts/.

1) Required fonts

When it comes to the fonts you prefer to have on your system, there is no right or wrong list, other than those the OSabsolutely requires to function. My idea of required fonts is based on years in prepress. So like most shops, the numberof fonts throughout the system is kept to a minimum in the effort to make sure you will never have a conflict with thefonts a client sends with their project. Actually, the prepress and full service printers I've worked and freelanced forusually have a much shorter list than even those presented here. Usually the barest minimum of Lucida Grande, LastResort and Keyboard. Such shops normally have no unnecessary software installed on their work stations; just what'sneeded to get production work done, and that's it.

That can be good in a way, but you would then be missing many fonts very commonly used on the web, such as Arial,Tahoma, Times New Roman, etc. Your browser ends up substituting the missing fonts with whatever's on hand. Webpages will display so badly at times, it can be difficult to even impossible to navigate them. You are then also missingmany fonts that the Apple supplied applications require to operate. So for the typical user, having only the "big three"fonts on your system is not recommended.

You can find quite a few web sites telling you what the minimum fonts for OS X should be. Each have their own reasonsfor including some I don't, and others they don't include that I feel should be available. My main decision making was torun every application OS X ships with and many major third party applications, seeing what wouldn't work if a particularfont were missing. The end result is the list of fonts you find here. It's a compromise between the Spartan set mostprepress shops use, and what a more fully functional OS needs along with proper display of web pages.

Grapher is not something normally used in prepress, which relies on the fonts Times and Symbol. As clients frequentlyuse other versions of Times and Symbol, the Apple supplied versions can be excluded from the lists below if you needthem out of the way. See section 2 for more on Grapher.

Readers who have followed this article for some time will note that Times and Symbol have been added to the requiredfont lists. They were excluded before since this article was originally intended as a guide for prepress, when the articlewas also much shorter in length. So the lists have been modified to represent what the majority of OS X users shouldhave in their /System/Library/Fonts/ folder, rather than the minority. Courier is another font which should be active atall times for most users, so has been added back into the minimum font lists for the System folder. As with Times andSymbol, remove Courier if it interferes with your need to use a PostScript version.

Users should be aware that not all font managers, and possibly other utilities, will list font names exactly as you seethem here. For example, Suitcase Fusion 3's interface lists Keyboard, Helvetica LT MM, and Times LT MM all as having aperiod preceding their names, even though they are not listed as having a period as part of the name by the OS. Noteven if you do a file listing in Terminal. Font Book also hides some fonts in its listings from the user in Snow Leopardand Lion, such as LastResort and Keyboard. But you shouldn't be removing those fonts anyway.

This section lists the most important fonts for overall use of OS X and most third party applications. It also includes thefonts most needed for the web, iLife and iWork. Section 2 describes other fonts you may need available at all times,depending on the software you use. Section 3 is headlined for Microsoft Office, but also revisits web fonts to note thedifference between older legacy Mac TrueType fonts and OpenType versions installed by the various versions of Office.

The following lists are the fonts you must have for OS X. All are located in the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder.

OS X, 10.3 Panther, and 10.4 Tiger

AppleGothic.dfontCourier.dfontGeneva.dfontHelvetica.dfontKeyboard.dfontLastResort.dfontLucidaGrande.dfontMonaco.dfontTimes.dfontSymbol.dfont

OS X, 10.5 Leopard

In this version, the Multiple Master fonts used by Preview are visible, whereas they are hidden in earlier versions of OS X.Helvetica and Helvetica Neue are now in the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder rather than the /Library/Fonts/ folder.Courier is no longer a critical system font in Leopard. Also notable is that Leopard comes with OpenType versions of thesame named fonts installed by Microsoft Office listed in section three. The following list is the minimum set of fonts forOS X, 10.5.

AppleGothic.ttfCourier.dfont Geneva.dfontHelveLTMMHelvetica LT MMHelvetica.dfontHelveticaNeue.dfontKeyboard.dfontLastResort.dfontLucidaGrande.dfontMarkerFelt.dfont (for the Notes portion of Mail)Monaco.dfontTimes LT MMTimesLTMMTimes.dfont Symbol.dfont

OS X, 10.6 Snow Leopard

The font formats have changed in Snow Leopard, though the main list of fonts is little different. Apple has replacedmany of their proprietary .dfont fonts with standard TrueType OpenType fonts, which have a .ttf or .ttc extension. Thereare a handful of .dfonts left in the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder, but for the most part, they're obsolete (see section 8for additional fonts Snow Leopard installs). As in 10.5, the Multiple Master fonts are visible. The minimum font list forOS X, 10.6 is as follows:

AppleGothic.ttfCourier.dfont Geneva.dfontHelveLTMMHelvetica LT MMHelvetica.dfontHelveticaLight.ttf (added in 10.6.5)HelveticaLightItalic.ttf (added in 10.6.5)HelveticaNeue.ttcKeyboard.ttfLastResort.ttfLucidaGrande.ttcMenlo.ttc (the new default font for Terminal)Monaco.dfontTimes LT MMTimesLTMMTimes.dfontSymbol.ttf

MarkerFelt.ttc is still required for the Notes portion of Mail in Snow Leopard, but is no longer in the/System/Library/Fonts/ folder. Instead, it's been moved to the /Library/Fonts/ folder.

OS X, 10.6.5 Snow Leopard

Two new fonts have been added in this midpoint update. Both of which are added to the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder,and the ProtectedFonts folder (section 5). As with Apple's versions of Helvetica and Helvetica Neue, the newHelveticaLight.ttf font conflicts with the Adobe Type 1 version. So you have yet another font to manage or remove inorder to use your preferred, or required version of Helvetica Light. Other fonts have received updates, so if you'veremoved them following your initial install of Snow Leopard, you'll have to remove the fonts again following the install

of any Snow Leopard Combo or Delta update which includes them. These fonts are:

In the /Library/Fonts/ folder:

Hoefler Text.ttcSTHeiti Medium.ttc

In the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder:

HelveticaLight.ttfHelveticaLightItalic.ttfMenlo.ttcHelveticaNeue.dfontSTHeiti Light.ttc

In the ProtectedFonts folder:

HelveticaLight.ttfHelveticaLightItalic.ttfHelveticaNeue.dfont

OS X, 10.7 Lion

At first glance, it appears Lion has eliminated Helvetica Light and Helvetica Light Italic from its required fonts. They arestill there and have been moved into the Helvetica.dfont package. HelveticaNeue, which was a .ttc font package in SnowLeopard, is now once again a .dfont. So .dfonts aren't as obsolete as it once looked like Apple was going to make them.MarkerFelt.ttc has apparently been forgiven of some transgression by the rest of the fonts in the/System/Library/Fonts/ folder and has returned there from its banishment in the /Library/Fonts/ folder of SnowLeopard.

I really don't know why HelveticaNeueDeskUI.ttc is a protected font. From the name, one would guess that DeskUIstands for Desktop User Interface. I've removed it from the system entirely in testing, and Lion didn't seem to care inthe least that it was gone. It's also one of those fonts that Suitcase 3 displays beginning with a period. In fact, even thenames of the four fonts within the TrueType Collection start with periods. Because of that, even when active, they don'tshow up in any application. They're not hurting anything to be in the System folder, and Apple must have some purposefor them, I just can't see what that may be. While you may never use it, Apple Color Emoji.ttf must be left in the System'sFonts folder. It will only cause a problem if you open the Character palette and click on the Emoji heading, but then theCharacter palette will be royally stuck. Lastly, if you use an email program other than Mail, you can remove Markerfelt.

Beginning with Lion, and likely from here forward, I would suggest users give up trying to use any Type 1PostScript versions of Helvetica. Apple has tied their conflicting versions of Helvetica so closely to the OS in somany places it is no longer easy to manage them. If you haven't already, purchase Adobe's or Linotype's newOpenType PostScript Helvetica fonts if you prefer, or require PostScript for your output. They do not conflict withApple's Helvetica fonts, so you don't have to fight with the OS supplied fonts as to which ones are active. UseType 1 PostScript when you have to accurately reproduce a standing older project (see section 5 if this applies toyou), but otherwise, avoid them.

One thing to be aware of under Lion is that when you disable Apple's Helvetica.dfont and HelveticaNeue.dfont, you aredisabling quite a few fonts. Which consist of:

Helvetica, Helvetica Bold, Helvetica Oblique, Helvetica BoldOblique, Helvetica Light, Helvetica LightOblique, HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue Bold, Helvetica Neue Italic, Helvetica Neue Bold Italic, Helvetica Neue Bold Condensed, HelveticaNeue UltraLight, Helvetica Neue UltraLight Italic, Helvetica Neue Light, Helvetica Neue Light Italic, Helvetica Neue BlackCondensed, Helvetica Neue Medium

Previously, you could remove Apple's Helvetica fonts and permanently use Type 1 PostScript versions in their place. Notany more. Address Book is one app which will not launch if Apple's version of Helvetica is missing. So for prepress,designers or others who must use Type 1 PostScript versions of Helvetica or Helvetica Neue, it is now a requirement tocopy Apple's Helvetica fonts to a non Fonts folder location, remove them from the System and ProtectedFonts folders,and then set up separate sets in your font manager for Apple's Helvetica fonts, and another for your third partyHelvetica fonts. Then turn on whichever set you need at the time and turn the other set off. It's not perfect as you mayneed the the Type 1 fonts open, which will leave you temporarily unable to open Address Book until you disable theType 1 fonts and turn the Apple supplied versions back on. But there is no way around it. You simply can't have both on

at the same time.

So other than this new problem for those who need the use of Type 1 PostScript Helvetica fonts, the minimum Systemfolder font list for OS X, 10.7 is as follows:

Apple Color Emoji.ttfAppleGothic.ttfCourier.dfontGeneva.dfontHelveLTMMHelvetica LT MMHelvetica.dfontHelveticaNeue.dfontHelveticaNeueDeskUI.ttcKeyboard.ttfLastResort.ttfLucidaGrande.ttcMarkerFelt.ttcMenlo.ttcMonaco.dfontSymbol.ttfTimes LT MMTimes.dfontTimesLTMM

A handful of fonts have received an update for Lion over the course of the OS updates noted next. If you had previouslyremoved the updated fonts from the /Library/Fonts/ folder, the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder and the ProtectedFontsfolder, you will need to do so again. You can see some are repeated as some of the fonts have been updated more thanonce. Also, if you commonly use the Combo updates, they will contain all fonts which have been updated since 10.7.0.So even if there are no font updates in a given point release, you will still be reinstalling all fonts which have receivedchanges. There are some minor date differences between 10.7.3 and 10.7.4 on a few fonts, but only by a few days. Iwould suspect they weren't actually changed.

OS X, 10.7.2 Lion

In the /Library/Fonts/ folder:

Devanagari Sangam MN.ttcMyanmar MN.ttcMyanmar Sangam MN.ttf

In the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder and the ProtectedFonts folder:

HelveticaNeue.dfontHelveticaNeueDeskUI.ttc

OS X, 10.7.3 Lion

In the /Library/Fonts/ folder:

Ayuthaya.ttfDevanagari Sangam MN.ttcKrungthep.ttfMyanmar MN.ttcMyanmar Sangam MN.ttfSathu.ttfSilom.ttf

In the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder and the ProtectedFonts folder:

HelveticaNeue.dfontHelveticaNeueDeskUI.ttc

OS X, 10.8 Mountain Lion

The minimum font list for 10.8 is almost identical to 10.7. AppleGothic.ttf is in the /Library/Fonts/ folder in MountainLion. It very likely wasn't intended to be, but that's where it is. Be sure to keep AppleGothic.ttf when doing any purgingof the /Library/Fonts/ folder. Otherwise, all other fonts are the same in Mountain Lion for the /System/Library/Fonts/folder as they are in Lion.

The only other semi font related difference is that Notes has been separated from Mail as an individual app. As inprevious versions of OS X, the default font for Notes is MarkerFelt.ttc.

For general system purposes and operation, these are the minimum fonts that should always be active on yourMacintosh for OS X and are the only ones you must not delete for any reason. Of those, Keyboard.dfont,LastResort.dfont and LucidaGrande.dfont are used mainly for menus and other system font display purposes and so arethe most important to the OS itself. You must never remove Lucida Grande. Without that font, the system will not boot.If you remove it while the system is active, you will lose control of all menus, essentially locking you out of your Mac. Allother fonts in the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder not listed above can be removed. You will need Administrative accessto delete fonts from this folder. It is advised to save them for future use. Create a new folder on your hard drive andcopy them there first. If there are any removed fonts you want to use for a project at a later date, they can always beactivated with Font Book, Suitcase Fusion 4, FontAgent Pro, MasterJuggler, FontExplorer X Pro, Fontcase or other fontmanager.

Beginning with Leopard, 10.5, Apple has made it difficult to remove critical fonts. If you attempt to remove protectedfonts from the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder, the OS will tell you that you cannot remove the font(s) and immediatelyreplaces them from copies in another location. There are quite a few fonts you can still remove from the/System/Library/Fonts/ folder, but others resurrect themselves if removed. See section five on how to permanentlyremove Apple's supplied versions of Helvetica and Helvetica Neue in Leopard, 10.5 through Mountain Lion, 10.8 if this isimportant for you.

The /Library/Fonts/ folder contains many standard web fonts. At minimum, the following fonts should remain in orderfor web pages to display properly. The names below are how they will appear in Leopard, 10.5 through Mountain Lion,10.8. Panther 10.3, and Tiger 10.4 have most of the following fonts as legacy Mac TrueType. Their names will be thesame as the shorter list noted at the beginning of section three. Panther, 10.3 does not include Impact. Neither 10.3, or10.4 include any version of Wingdings.

Arial.ttfArial Bold.ttfArial Italic.ttfArial Bold Italic.ttfArial Black.ttfArial Narrow.ttfArial Narrow Bold.ttfArial Narrow Italic.ttfArial Narrow Bold Italic.ttfComic Sans MS.ttfComic Sans MS Bold.ttfGeorgia.ttfGeorgia Italic.ttfGeorgia Bold.ttfGeorgia Bold Italic.ttfImpact.ttfTahoma.ttfTahoma Bold.ttfTimes New Roman.ttfTimes New Roman Bold.ttfTimes New Roman Italic.ttfTimes New Roman Bold Italic.ttfTrebuchet MS.ttfTrebuchet MS Bold.ttfTrebuchet MS Italic.ttfTrebuchet MS Bold Italic.ttfVerdana.ttf

Verdana Bold.ttfVerdana Italic.ttfVerdana Bold Italic.ttfWingdings.ttf Wingdings 2.ttfWingdings 3.ttfWebdings.ttf

With the exception of the above list, MarkerFelt.ttc in Snow Leopard, and AppleGothic.ttf in Mountain Lion, allother fonts in the /Library/Fonts/ folder can be removed (refer to the next statement concerning iLife and iWork). Seesection 3 on the fonts Office 2011 installs. Some are newer, and some are older than those installed by Leopard, SnowLeopard, Lion or Mountain Lion.

The following fonts are also located in the /Library/Fonts/ folder. While the iLife and iWork apps will launch without thefollowing fonts, the supplied templates use them. Apple suggests these fonts always be available for these apps. If youdo not use the any of the iLife or iWork apps, you can remove these fonts. Most of these fonts in Leopard, 10.5 andearlier are .dfonts. Also in 10.5 and earlier, Chalkboard and Chalkboard Bold are separate fonts. In 10.6 and later, theyare combined in the TrueType Collection, Chalkboard.ttc.

AmericanTypewriter.ttcBaskerville.ttcBigCaslon.ttfChalkboard.ttcCochin.ttcCopperplate.ttcDidot.ttcFutura.ttcGillSans.ttcHerculanum.ttfHoefler Text.ttcOptima.ttcPapyrus.ttc

Once you have manually reduced the fonts on your system to the minimum, always use your font manager to control allother font activation and deactivation. The better font managers will stop you from creating font conflicts. Your fontmanager can't help prevent that if you manually place fonts you want to use in a Fonts folder.

An important step you should take after manually removing fonts is to clear the font cache files from the system.See section 17 for the proper procedure. Font Book users should also reset the application to update itsdatabase. See section 6 for more details.

When it comes to font managers, there's one thing I can't stress enough. Have only one font manager on your Mac ata time. You'll find yourself scratching your head in confusion a lot otherwise. For instance, say you have both SuitcaseFusion 4 and FontExplorer X Pro on your Mac. When you double click on a new font in a folder, both Suitcase andFontExplorer X Pro will add it to their list of activated fonts. You then later disable the font in Suitcase. However, thefont is still active in all of your applications. Why? Because FontExplorer X Pro is still holding the font open. I usedSuitcase and FontExplorer X Pro for this example, but this will happen in virtually any case of multiple font managers onyour system. So once you have decided which font manager you are going to use, completely remove any other fontmanager from your Mac.

If you double click a font, your third party font manager will activate the font. At the same time, Font Book will show apreview of the font and give you the choice to activate the font or cancel. By canceling, the font will not be copied to theFonts folder chosen in its preferences. In this way, Font Book can be used strictly as a font viewer. Though since all fontmanagers I've tried have their own way of displaying font samples, it isn't necessary to keep Font Book on your harddrive if you're not using it. Font Book has no special connection to the OS. It's just another font manager and can besafely removed. Also, just having Font Book's database on the system can possibly prevent another font manager fromworking correctly. So if you aren't using it, you should not have Font Book on the drive. See section 6 on the steps forcompletely removing Font Book and its database.

The next section will explain which other fonts you may want to have active at all times, depending on the programsyou frequently use.

2) Known issues with disabled fonts

Some of the OS X supplied applications that will not launch if Helvetica is missing are mentioned in Apple KnowledgeBase article TA22311. While not listed in that particular article, iChat is another application which requires Helvetica, asdoes iCal. If you've seen the message, "Internal Error" when starting iChat, you're missing Helvetica.

There's no good reason to remove the OS X supplied versions Helvetica or Helvetica Neue unless you work inprepress, advertising, design, etc., where you must be able to use a different version of these type faces (seesection 5). If you don't, leave them be.

Note: The use of Helvetica has changed starting with Leopard, 10.5. While the system normally prevents you fromremoving either Helvetica or Helvetica Neue, I have removed both from the hard drive and found that iChat and iCal nolonger seem to be affected. Both launched and displayed without either Helvetica font available. iPhoto 7 and iLife 08both require the presence of Helvetica Neue.

Mail is one application that seems to require, or at least prefer the Unicode versions of Helvetica supplied with Leopard.It will work without them as long as you have another version of Helvetica and Helvetica Neue open, but may have somedisplay problems, such as text being misaligned or overrunning its intended space. Mail also requires MarkerFelt, or theNotes portion of the application won't open. Notes has been separated as an individual app from Mail starting inMountain Lion, 10.8.

Some applications require the presence of Courier in Panther and Tiger. Terminal is one application that will launch, butnot display correctly if Monaco is missing (Menlo in Snow Leopard or Lion). I have found no reference that requiresGeneva, but it's best to leave it as it has long been a standard font for the Macintosh OS.

If you are using the Monaco (X-Rite) GamutWorks application, it requires Times to function. This can be the Times.dfontsupplied with OS X, an OpenType or a Type 1 PostScript version. But it must be Times. Times New Roman or any othervariation of the Times typeface will not work.

Apple's Grapher application also requires Times. Like Monaco's GamutWorks, it must specifically be Times. In addition,Grapher also requires Symbol. Without Times, Grapher will not launch, instead giving you a message that there was aproblem with the application. If you have Times open but not Symbol, Grapher will launch but then erroneously tell youthere is a font conflict, when in reality it's just that Symbol is missing.

If the font AppleGothic.dfont is not installed, the following problems occur:

a) You will find that the Adobe CS line of applications will not install in Leopard or Tiger (the CS2 applications do notappear to be affected). When trying to install them, you only get as far as entering your administrative password, andchoosing your language. The installer then quits. The CS applications run fine once installed. It is only the installersthemselves that are affected by the absence of AppleGothic.dfont.

b) The retail version of OS X Tiger itself has an issue if AppleGothic.dfont is not available. When the DVD is inserted, thedisk begins to automatically open, but the Finder then closes the DVD file window and resets before even seeing thecontents.

c) In Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac OS X, previous to version 11.2, PowerPoint will complain that four of the Asian fontsare missing if you are using the short list of fonts mentioned in section one. One error message for each of the fourfonts that you need to dismiss. It doesn't effect the operations of PowerPoint, just an annoyance that it insists on tellingyou that fonts you don't need (as an English speaking user) are missing. You can eliminate this problem by updating to11.2.x (11.2.1 being current at the time of writing). If you have already attempted to run PowerPoint after updating to11.2.x without AppleGothic.dfont active, then you have already discovered that PowerPoint crashes after clicking theOpen button at the Project Gallery. To fix this problem, activate AppleGothic.dfont. Run PowerPoint again. This time,after clicking Open in the Project Gallery, you will get a message that certain Asian fonts are missing. Turn on the checkbox at the lower left to tell PowerPoint to never check for those fonts. PowerPoint will thereafter start without errors, ordisplay any messages about missing fonts. Such issues have been eliminated in Office 2008 and 2011. All of itsapplications will open without any error messages.

Apple Gothic isn't needed often, but given its importance to viewing and using installation disks and its effect onMicrosoft Office, it is advised to have it enabled at all times.

3) Fonts installed by Microsoft Office

There are a few fonts installed by OS X and Microsoft programs (namely, Office products) that should be left active sincethe Microsoft applications (X and 2004 and 2008 versions) need these fonts. Also, many web sites use these fonts andwill display better if they are available on your system. None of these fonts should interfere with any prepress operationin the form of conflicting with a PostScript font of the same name, so can be safely left as is. They are:

ArialArial BlackArial NarrowComic Sans MSGeorgiaImpact TahomaTimes New Roman Trebuchet MSVerdanaWebdings (from OS 9 or X)

OS 9 includes these fonts, but OS X before Leopard, 10.5 does not.

WingdingsWingdings 2Wingdings 3

Expanded font list for Leopard through Mountain Lion:

Because the fonts supplied with Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion in the /Library/Fonts/ folder areOpenType (some are .dfonts) rather than legacy TrueType suitcase fonts, the list appears longer. OpenType fonts aresaved as one font per file (those with a .ttf extension). For example, while the Arial legacy suitcase font from Office2004 looks like one item, it actually contains four fonts; Arial, Arial Bold, Arial Italic and Arial Bold Italic. The OpenTypefonts appear as four individual items. So the font list for Leopard through Mountain Lion will appear as follows to matchthe visually shorter list above:

Arial.ttfArial Bold.ttfArial Italic.ttfArial Bold Italic.ttfArial Black.ttfArial Narrow.ttfArial Narrow Bold.ttfArial Narrow Italic.ttfArial Narrow Bold Italic.ttfComic Sans MS.ttfComic Sans MS Bold.ttfGeorgia.ttfGeorgia Italic.ttfGeorgia Bold.ttfGeorgia Bold Italic.ttfImpact.ttfTahoma.ttfTahoma Bold.ttfTimes New Roman.ttfTimes New Roman Bold.ttfTimes New Roman Italic.ttfTimes New Roman Bold Italic.ttfTrebuchet MS.ttfTrebuchet MS Bold.ttfTrebuchet MS Italic.ttfTrebuchet MS Bold Italic.ttfVerdana.ttfVerdana Bold.ttfVerdana Italic.ttfVerdana Bold Italic.ttf

Wingdings.ttf Wingdings 2.ttfWingdings 3.ttfWebdings.ttf

Important note! Leopard, 10.5 through Mountain Lion, 10.8 include many of the same named fonts Office installs onyour system. These are larger, OpenType TrueType fonts. You can quickly identify the difference between them a fewways.

1) The Apple supplied fonts are larger in size.2) The OpenType fonts have a newer creation date.3) The Apple OpenType fonts have a .ttf or .ttc extension, the fonts installed by Office X, 2004 and 2008 do not.4) In list view, open the folder window wide enough to see the Kind column. The OpenType fonts will be named as such.Your system may also denote them as TrueType fonts, but they are OpenType structured fonts.

Because the older fonts from Office X, 2004 and 2008 do not have extensions (they are still legacy OS 9 style suitcasefonts), both end up being installed (normally) in the /Library/Fonts/ folder, creating a large number of font conflicts.This doesn't mean that if the fonts aren't in the same folder you won't have font conflicts. They can be spread out in anyorder in any active fonts folder to create conflicts. See section 6 for the active Fonts folder locations.

To address these multiple conflicts, you will have to manually remove one each of the fonts that are the same name toclear up the conflicts. You could resolve the font conflicts in Font Book, but there's no telling which version it would turnoff since you can't specifically select one or the other. Office can use either type of font, so always keep the OpenTypefonts. They have far more glyphs (like ligatures, swash characters and other styles) that the older 8 bit, 256 characterfonts do not. So for example, keep the Leopard/Snow Leopard/Lion/Mountain Lion installed fonts Tahoma.ttf andTahoma Bold.ttf, and remove the older Office font Tahoma. The newer OpenType fonts will also provide correct website viewing with the font names a web page calls for, so there is no need to keep the older versions. There's more toconflicting font names than the names of the files themselves. This is explained in detail later in this article.

Any time you manually remove fonts, you should then clear the font cache files from the system (section 17) and resetFont Book's database (section 6).

Office X:

Not very wisely, Office X installed all of its fonts into the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder. You had to know which fontsbelonged to Office and be logged in as an administrator before removing them. Thankfully, Microsoft changed itspractice after this version of Office.

Office 2004:

The Office 2004 products install their fonts in the ~/Library/Fonts/ folder. This is done the first time you run any of theOffice products after the initial install in each user account. Tahoma, Trebuchet MS and Verdana are used by Officeapplications for menus and other program display purposes. All other fonts installed by Office can be removed, leavingonly those fonts listed above. They will not be reinstalled by Office after you have removed them. So again, first copythem to another location for future use.

That said, others report that all fonts went to the /Library/Fonts/ folder. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to thelocation the Office fonts end up in. Your best bet is to first examine each of the Fonts folders (see section 6 forlocations) before installing Office to see what fonts are already on your system. Then after Office installs its fonts,reexamine the folders to see what has changed and then move, or remove the fonts you don't want active.

Some users have had the problem of fonts being installed by Office each time they remove them. One user offered thissimple trick. To keep Office from reinstalling the fonts, rename the folder where the fonts reside in Office so it can't findthem. The location (for Office 2004. The name for Office X will be slightly different) is /Applications/Microsoft Office2004/Office/Fonts/. Simply rename the folder Fonts within the Office application folder to something else. Just adding aletter to the beginning should be enough, such as xFonts. Be aware though that if you create a new user account, noneof the fonts will be installed for that user if you do rename the Fonts folder. The easiest was around that though is totake one set of the fonts and put them in the /Library/Fonts/ folder. Since every user can access fonts in that folder,you can then remove the same named fonts from every user account. Which you actually must do to avoid font conflictswith the duplicated fonts between the Fonts folder locations.

Office 2008:

Microsoft did a very nice thing with Office 2008. It installs its fonts only once during the initial installation to the/Library/Fonts/Microsoft/ folder. No duplicates of the fonts are kept in the Office application folder, nor are they copiedrepeatedly for each user. Removing them is a snap. Just move the entire Microsoft folder out of the /Library/Fonts/folder. Office 2008 does not require a single font it comes with to operate, instead using OS X system fonts for itsmenus and palettes.

If you are running Leopard, 10.5, Snow Leopard, 10.6, Lion, 10.7 or Mountain Lion 10.8, you will still want to prefer touse the same named fonts that come with the OS. They are larger sets than those that come with Office 2008. The fontsfrom Office 2008, while high quality, are still legacy TrueType suitcase style fonts such as from OS 9 and earlier.

Office 2011:

As with Office 2008, the fonts installed by Office 2011 go to the /Library/Fonts/Microsoft/ folder. And as before, itcreates conflicts with the existing similar fonts installed by OS X. If you already have the Office 2008 set of fonts onyour hard drive, Office 2011 will replace them. There are also 27 more fonts than in Office 2008. 62 Mac legacyTrueType fonts installed by Office 2011 are identical to those from Office 2008. Six typefaces which used to be legacyfonts are now .ttf fonts. Usually such changes are to fix minor flaws in the fonts, or to improve kerning and kerningpairs for a more pleasing look.

The Office 2011 installation creates a mixed bag of older and newer conflicting fonts. You need to manually sort themout as described next.

During the initial install of Office 2011, newer .ttf font sets replace those installed by OS X, Leopard, Snow Leopard andLion. The older fonts are deprecated to a new folder named /Library/Fonts Disabled/. They are:

Arial.ttfArial Italic.ttf Arial Bold.ttf Arial Bold Italic.ttfBrush Script.ttfTimes New Roman.ttfTimes New Roman Italic.ttf Times New Roman Bold.ttf Times New Roman Bold Italic.ttf Verdana.ttfVerdana Italic.ttf Verdana Bold.ttfVerdana Bold Italic.ttfWingdings.ttf Wingdings 2.ttfWingdings 3.ttf

There is no need to keep the fonts in the /Library/Fonts Disabled/ folder since identically named newer versions havebeen installed. You can delete the entire Fonts Disabled folder if you wish.

Mountain Lion's .ttc fonts are identical to those installed by Office 2011, so it doesn't matter which ones you keep.

Office 2011 also installs conflicting fonts which are older than those supplied with Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion orMountain Lion. These are Mac legacy TrueType suitcase fonts, as opposed to much newer .ttf versions supplied withLeopard through Mountain Lion. So keep the .ttf fonts supplied with OS X and remove the following Mac legacyTrueType suitcase fonts from the /Library/Fonts/Microsoft/ folder:

Andale MonoArial BlackArial NarrowArial Rounded BoldComic Sans MSGeorgiaImpactTahomaTrebuchet MS

For at least the last couple versions of Office, Microsoft has used the font family Cambria as the default for Word and

Outlook. If you prefer to use some other font as your defaults, you can change it. In Word 2011, open the Normal.dotmtemplate in your user account at ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/. Press Command+Dto call up the font palette. Choose the font and point size you prefer, then press the Default button at the lower left.Click OK. Close the template and save. All new documents will now open with your chosen default font rather thanCambria. For Outlook, open the preferences and click on the Fonts icon. Change the options to your preferred font andclose the preferences. You must do this before removing any fonts Outlook uses by default. If either font in itspreferences are not available when you click on the Fonts icon, the preference won't open.

Once you have your preferences set for Word and Outlook, you can remove the rest of the fonts Office 2011 installs. Ifyou use any of the preset documents from the Document Gallery, they will still open even if you remove every fontOffice installs. Any missing font the pre-designed document looks for will simply be substituted with an existing font.Clicking anywhere on the substituted text will show the font name Word is looking for in the font selection drop downmenu.

For more detailed information on the various Mac versions of Microsoft Office, visit Diane Ross' web site.

4) What to do with Suitcase:

Suitcase X and X1:

Once you have your fonts where you want them and you are running Suitcase X or X1, you will need to reset theapplication. When any fonts are added manually, or by another application to an active Fonts folder, those fonts areautomatically added as fixed entries in Suitcase X and X1. You cannot remove them within the application. Also,removing any of those fonts manually from the Fonts folder(s) they are in, as we are doing here, does not clear thoseentries. Suitcase will forever list all fonts which are removed manually as though nothing has changed. More, you can'tremove the non existent fonts from its list. To fix Suitcase, go to the ~/Library/Preferences/ folder and remove theSuitcase preferences, which is a folder named "Suitcase" within the Preferences folder. Restart your Mac. Suitcase will beas it was when you first installed it, but now only fonts that truly exist will be listed. You will need to reset any otherapplication preferences that are not the defaults. You will also lose all font sets you have created. Since my experience isalmost exclusively with Suitcase, I don't know how manually removing fonts may affect other font managers.

None of this is necessary with Suitcase Fusion, or Suitcase Fusion 2 through 4. Simply restart your Mac and Suitcase willcorrectly reflect the active fonts on your system. That said, occasionally Fusion will not fix itself after a restart. See thenext following categories to repair the version of Fusion you are using.

Suitcase Fusion:

To manually reset Suitcase Fusion, go to the ~/Library/Application Support/Extensis/Suitcase/ folder, remove the fileSuitcase Font Database.suitcasevault and restart your Mac.

Suitcase Fusion 2 through 4:

To manually reset Suitcase Fusion 2 through 4, go to the ~/Library/Extensis/Suitcase Fusion/ folder, remove the fileSuitcase Fusion.fontvault and restart your Mac. You may need to enter the System Preferences and reselect the newlyrecreated database.

You can also replace this file through the System Preferences. Open the System Preferences and click on the SuitcaseFusion 2 (3 or 4) Core icon. Click the Stop button to halt Suitcase. Once it stops, the buttons at the lower right will beactive. Click "New..." and Suitcase will show the current file being used. Click "Save" to use the same name. Suitcase willwarn you that you're about to replace the current database. Click "Replace". Restart your Mac. You may need to reenterthe System Preferences to turn the Fusion Core on. You will only need to do this once after replacing the database.

Preserving fonts in the vault for Suitcase Fusion and Suitcase Fusion 2 through 4:

A warning with the above method for resetting all versions of Suitcase Fusion. If you have Suitcase set to store fonts youactivate in its vault and you delete its database, they will all disappear with it. This would be especially bad if you alsohave the preference set to delete the original fonts (original version of Fusion only) after adding them to the vault andyou don't have access to the originals. Losing your original fonts does not apply to Suitcase Fusion 2 through 4 as theydo not have the option to delete fonts you add to the vault, but you will still lose all fonts stored in the vault if youremove the database. If you always activate fonts in place and never use the vault, then removing the database is safe todo at any time with any version of Suitcase Fusion.

If you are using the vault and need to reset any version of Suitcase Fusion, follow these steps first to save the fonts

stored in the vault.

1) In the Suitcase Fusion interface, change the pull down menu between the two left panes to "Suitcase Fusion Fonts".These are the fonts stored in the vault. Highlight all sets in the top left window. For Suitcase Fusion 2 through 4, yoursets will be in the left pane under the "Font Library" heading. Highlight the first set and then Shift+click on the last setto select all. With any Fusion version, now press Command+D. It will ask you where you want to save your fonts.Navigate to an existing folder or create a new one. Choose your target folder and press the Collect button in Fusion, orthe Choose button in Fusion 2 through 4. Suitcase will save full copies of the vault fonts to that folder. They will also besaved in subfolders by the same name of all sets you had them separated by.

2) Quit Suitcase. Click Quit on Fusion's warning about shutting it down (Fusion 2 through 4 work differently and willsimply close).

3) Go to your user account and remove the vault database noted above for Fusion, Fusion 2, Fusion 3 or Fusion 4.Relaunch Suitcase Fusion, or restart your Mac for Fusion 2 through 4.

4) Go to the folder you had saved your vault fonts to and drag and drop the subfolders of fonts into the Suitcaseapplication. This will add them back to the vault and recreate your sets by the same names you were using before. Themain difference is the restored fonts will now point to the sets you dragged in, not the original locations.

5) Controlling Helvetica and Courier fonts for prepress

If you work in a professional prepress environment, then this section will be important to you.

Do you need to remove Apple's Helvetica fonts?

I note this since not everyone reading this section may be clear on why you would want, or need to do this. Apple madethe unfortunate decision to give their Helvetica fonts the exact same internal names as the long standing Type 1PostScript fonts from Adobe and Linotype. This creates a fixed font conflict that can be definitively resolved only byremoving Apple's fonts from the system. This does not affect the newer OpenType Helvetica fonts available from Adobeand Linotype as they do not have the same internal names, and can therefore peacefully coexist with Apple's versions.Since it is imperative to use the exact same version of a font that was used to create a project, the conflict with the olderType 1 Helvetica fonts makes it necessary to remove Apple's fonts.

This all started long before OS X. Apple's Helvetica fonts have always conflicted with the Type 1 versions. But back in OS9 and earlier, nobody cared. Apple wasn't using them in the interface or any of its applications, so it was a non issue tojust remove Apple's Helvetica fonts from the hard drive and put your Type 1 fonts in their place. Then came OS X andApple decided to start using Helvetica rather extensively in its applications design, forcing it to become a required font.

For the typical home user, there is no need to replace the supplied .dfont or .ttc versions of Courier or Helvetica.The information in this section is intended for advanced users. If you have no need to use older Type 1PostScript or other older conflicting versions of Helvetica, Helvetica Neue or Courier, then please disregard theseinstructions to avoid possibly causing your Mac to become unusable by accidentally removing critical systemfonts.

For Panther and Tiger; Courier and Helvetica must be present in some form. They do not however, have to be the .dfontversions supplied with OS X. Any form of Courier or Helvetica will do to satisfy OS X's needs, whether they are thesupplied .dfont, a Type 1 PostScript, legacy TrueType, or OpenType version.

For Leopard through Mountain Lion, the .dfont/.ttc supplied versions of Helvetica and Helvetica Neue are necessary forMail, iPhoto 7 and iLife 08. Address Book in Lion and Mountain Lion requires Apple's version of Helvetica to launch.There is also Helvetica Light as a separate font in Snow Leopard (it is folded into Helvetica.dfont in Lion and MountainLion). You can still use the following instructions to remove Apple's .dfont or .ttc fonts from the System folder, but youshould place copies of the OS X supplied fonts in another location. That way, you can use your font manager to activateyour PostScript fonts and deactivate the .dfont/.ttc fonts when needed. Then deactivate the PostScript fonts and activateApple's fonts for normal use of your Mac.

In all following cases, if you use Font Book and have manually removed Apple's Helvetica fonts, you must alsoreset Font Book's database. A damaged or orphaned Font Book database can also cause other font managers tobe unable to activate or deactivate fonts, even if the Font Book application is not on the hard drive. It can evenprevent fonts from activating that you manually place in a Fonts folder. So whether you use Font Book or not,you must delete/reset its database after manually removing fonts from the system. See section 6 under

"Resetting Font Book's database" for more details. If you have already removed Font Book and reset its database,you do not need to repeat these steps.

Removing Helvetica and Courier in Panther and Tiger.

Remove Courier.dfont and Helvetica.dfont from the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder. You will need Administrative accessto remove these two fonts. Then permanently activate Type 1 PostScript or PostScript OpenType versions of Courier andHelvetica with your font manager, or place copies of your preferred fonts directly in the /Library/Fonts/ folder.

Despite its technically different name, earlier OS X versions of Courier New conflicted with the PostScript Courier.Remove the .dfont version of Courier New also and use a standard PostScript Type 1 or PostScript OpenType copy ofCourier instead. In Tiger and Leopard, the internal names of the OS X supplied versions of Courier New have been fixedso as not to conflict with Courier. So both versions of Courier can be on your system if you wish.

You can also place permanent copies of Courier and Helvetica in any of your hard drive folders listed in the next section.Unlike OS 9 or earlier, you can place folders of fonts into a Fonts folder. OS X will see and open all fonts in anysubfolders. The disadvantage of opening fonts this way is that they will not be available to programs running in Classic.Use a font manager such as Suitcase (versions X or X1), MasterJuggler or FontAgent Pro to overcome this limitation.

Removing Helvetica, Helvetica Neue and Helvetica Light in Leopard and Snow Leopard.

Apple has gone to fairly great lengths in Leopard and later to save the user from themselves by protecting certain fonts.While this is a wonderful safety net for the typical user, it's a headache for professional printers and prepress shops whomust use PostScript versions of Helvetica. Especially since Font Book always favors the Apple versions when usingResolve Conflicts. It doesn't even give the option of choosing one over the other. On top of that, if you try to open aType 1 PostScript font, only these styles not already active in Apple's versions will appear. I tried activating a Type 1PostScript version of Helvetica through Suitcase Fusion (before the Fusion 2 through 4 versions) with Apple's version stillin place. Even with the option to allow Suitcase to manage system fonts on and Font Book's option to "Alert me if systemfonts change" off, Suitcase still could not override the Apple supplied versions, leaving only one PostScript typefaceactive that didn't already exist in the .dfont copy.

Because Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion keep resurrecting them, removing Helvetica.dfont andHelveticaNeue.dfont (HelveticaNeue.ttc and Helvetica Light in Snow Leopard) is not a simple matter, but it can be done.To do so, follow the steps below.

1) Go to the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder. Copy Helvetica.dfont, HelveticaNeue.dfont / (HelveticaNeue.ttc andHelvetica Light - Snow Leopard only) to another location for normal use of your Mac when you do not need a Type 1PostScript version active. Helvetica.dfont, HelveticaNeue.dfont / HelveticaNeue.ttc and Helvetica Light do not need tospecifically be in the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder in order to work correctly for Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion orMountain Lion. Therefore, you can activate them with your font manager in the usual fashion.

2) Go to the /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/ATS.framework/Versions/A/Resources/ProtectedFonts/ folder. Delete the files Helvetica.dfont, HelveticaNeue.dfont(HelveticaNeue.ttc and HelveticaLight.ttf in Snow Leopard). Do not remove any other fonts! Restart your Mac.

3) If you use Font Book, open Font Book and highlight both Helvetica, Helvetica Neue and Helvetica Light (SnowLeopard). Disable the fonts using the menu or by pressing Command+Shift+D. With both files still highlighted, rightclick (or Ctrl+click with a one button mouse) and choose "Remove Fonts". The fonts should disappear from Font Book'slist and the fonts themselves from the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder. If the fonts remain in the /System/Library/Fonts/folder, you can manually remove them after a restart. You will need your Administrator password to do so. Restart yourMac.

4) If you do not use Font Book, go directly to the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder and delete Helvetica, Helvetica Neue andHelvetica Light (Snow Leopard). Enter your Administrator password when prompted to complete the action.

5) Restart your Mac. This is important as the OS does not release fonts removed from the System folder. They remainactive even in the Trash. You must restart in order to release them, otherwise you will still be unable to use your thirdparty Helvetica fonts.

Removing Helvetica and Helvetica Neue in Lion and Mountain Lion.

The general steps are the same as for Leopard and Snow Leopard, but Font Book in Lion and Mountain Lion will notremove any fonts from the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder. You can select such fonts in Font Book's list, choose remove

and click OK, but they will not be deleted. So you must manually remove Helvetica.dfont and HelveticaNeue.dfont. Donot remove HelveticaNeueDeskUI.ttc.

With the backup fonts for Helvetica.dfont, HelveticaNeue.dfont / (HelveticaNeue.ttc and Helvetica Light in Snow Leopard)removed from the ProtectedFonts folder, they will no long keep reappearing in the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder. Youwill now be able to activate full copies of your preferred Helvetica fonts.

Courier is no longer a required font for OS X in Leopard, 10.5 through Mountain Lion, 10.8. As long as you haveAdministrative privileges, you can remove the supplied .dfont copy of Courier from the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder.

Suitcase Fusion 2 through 4 and Helvetica fonts: These versions of Suitcase can automatically circumvent the AppleHelvetica fonts.

1) Turn off the check box in Font Book's preferences to warn when system fonts have changed. Close the preferences.You can then delete the Font Book application if you wish (and actually, should).

2) Clear all font cache files and restart. See section 17 for more on font cache removal.

3) In Suitcase Fusion 2, 3 or 4's preferences, make sure the radio button for "Activate the requested font" is on. Also,have the check box on for "Notify if a conflict occurs". You should always know when a font you're activating is turninganother one off that you may need for a current project.

Now you can leave Apple's Helvetica fonts right where they are in the System folder. When you open a conflictingHelvetica font (normally a Type 1 version) it will pop up a box that fonts you are opening conflict with the System fonts.Continue and Suitcase Fusion 2 through 4 automatically deactivate the system fonts in favor of the Helvetica fonts youjust turned on. When you deactivate your Helvetica fonts, the Apple Helvetica system fonts are turned back on for you.

I have double and triple checked this in various applications, turning Type 1 fonts on and off while I had a documentopen. Activate your Type 1 Helvetica fonts and the Apple fonts disappear from the available font menus. Deactivate theType 1 versions and the Apple fonts are once again back. Same with the Helvetica Neue fonts.

If you'd rather be completely sure rather than relying on Suitcase's system to work, you may still want to removeApple's fonts from the system folder and manually activate them from a different location when you don't need anotherversion of Helvetica active. This is what I still highly recommend since some users have noted that Suitcase Fusion 2isn't always able to deactivate Apple's Helvetica fonts on their systems. I haven't heard yet whether anyone is seeing thisissue with Suitcase Fusion 3 or 4.

6) Font folder locations - Using Font Book

OS X uses a folder priority to locate and open fonts. This list is in order from highest priority to lowest.

~/Library/Fonts//Library/Fonts//Network/Library/Fonts//System/Library/Fonts//System Folder/Fonts/ (the OS 9 Fonts folder)

(Source: Apple Knowledge Base article HT2435).

Fonts activated from Suitcase or other third party font manager not located on the Mac in any of the above folders aregiven the least priority overall. You can see then that a version of Helvetica activated by your font manager will besuperseded by any version of Helvetica located in any of the previously listed folders. In order to use your PostScriptfonts activated by your font manger, all like named versions must be removed from the higher priority folders.

OS X's Font Book has preferential treatment here. By that, I mean fonts you activate using Font Book will get a higherpriority over other font managers as it uses the folders listed above to activate and deactivate fonts.

The advantage of Font Book (besides being free) is that by knowing these rules, you can try to quickly force preferenceof one font over another of the same name by placing the font in a Fonts folder that has a higher priority, although youshould always avoid knowingly doing this. A font conflict will almost always prevent either font from showing up inany application if both are active. The advantage of Suitcase (versions X and X1) and Master Juggler is that fonts areactivated from wherever they are located on the hard drive, eliminating the possibility of a font being corrupted duringthe copy method Font Book uses (prior to 10.5). These three particular third party font managers also have the

advantage of activating fonts for OS X and the OS 9 Classic environment simultaneously, with the exception of .dfontsas noted in the last paragraph of section 8.

Suitcase Fusion 2 and 3 can also activate fonts in place, but no long support activating fonts for Classic. FontAgent Proand MasterJuggler are the only remaining font managers which can simultaneously open fonts for OS X and Classic.

Font Book in Panther, 10.3 (before 10.3.5)

If you use Font Book to manage your fonts, it copies the font(s) selected into one of the folder locations listed abovedepending on which radio button you choose in the application. When you remove the font or fonts, Font Book deletesthe fonts from the location they were copied to.

If you choose for me only, the font(s) are copied to the ~/Library/Fonts/ folder, automatically giving them the highestpriority over any same named font in the hierarchy. If you switch users, the font(s) will not be active under otheraccounts on that Mac since they are in your user folder.

If you choose for all users of this computer, then the font(s) are copied to the /Library/Fonts/ folder. In this case,priority drops down one rung in the hierarchy and will be active when switching to another user, even though they didn'topen the font(s) since they will reside in the common /Library/Fonts/ folder.

Lastly, choosing classic Mac OS will copy the font(s) into the OS 9 /System Folder/Fonts/ folder. Not only will fontsactivated this way be available to applications running in the OS 9 Classic mode, but also to OS X native programs. Whenyou remove fonts opened with this last choice, the fonts remain available to Classic applications until the Classicenvironment is restarted even though they are removed from the /System Folder/Fonts/ folder. Fonts opened withSuitcase (versions X or X1), FontAgent Pro, or MasterJuggler are also made available to applications running in Classicand OS X simultaneously without copying.

Font Book in Panther 10.3.5 through Tiger, 10.4

Starting with OS X Panther 10.3.5 and on into Lion, Font Book has changed the way it handles closed fonts. Previously, itwould delete the fonts from the active font folder when you disabled them. Its new method is to leave the fonts wherethey are and use a separate system function to denote that they are supposed to be closed. This causes problems withmost third party applications in versions of OS X before 10.4.3. Since the fonts are left in a Fonts folder, the underlyingUnix system still considers them active. So "disabled" fonts still appear in almost all non Apple applications such asthose by Adobe, Microsoft, Quark and others. There is no workaround in OS X before 10.4.3 other than to discontinueuse of Font Book and use a third party font manager such as those listed in section one.

There are only two preferences in this version of Font Book. Where you want activated fonts copied to and whether ornot to validate them (check for corrupt fonts). The only locations available when activating fonts are the Fonts folder ofyour user account at ~/Library/Fonts/, or the global /Library/Fonts/ folder. Any new fonts you activate will be copied towhichever Fonts folder you chose in Font Book's preferences if they aren't already there. When you deactivate the fonts,they remain in the folder they were copied to.

OS X 10.4.3 and later has resolved the problem of having fonts in the /Library/Fonts/ or ~/Library/Fonts/folders. All applications I tested with do indeed respond to the fonts being deactivated with Font Book. Evenolder applications that were written before Font Book existed. This change appears to be at the system levelsince Suitcase Fusion and FontExplorer X Pro can successfully do the same thing.

At least in theory, it's been fixed. A few readers note that they are still having issues with fonts remaining on after beingmarked as disabled in Font Book. But I think that's a matter of a corrupt database. It's very common for fonts to remainactive, or unable to be activated if Font Book's database is damaged. See just below for information on how to reset FontBook.

Font Book in Leopard, 10.5, Snow Leopard, 10.6 and Lion, 10.7

Font Book adds a few more choices to Font Book in Leopard and Snow Leopard, but it remains basically the sameapplication with the same methods. Newly activated fonts are copied to one of the two available Font folder locations.New options include the option to validate fonts when activated (check for errors), and to automatically activate fonts adocument needs that you have opened, if possible. There is a sub choice to ask first before activating in such aninstance. It also has an option to alert you if the system fonts have changed, which is on by default.

Starting with Leopard, Font Book includes the ability to open fonts in place. To do so, you need to choose File > NewLibrary from the menu. Make sure the Library you created is highlighted and add your fonts. Rather than copying every

font you activate to the Fonts folder chosen in Font Book's preferences, the fonts are activated from wherever theyreside.

Lion adds a font conflict resolution screen. See the font reviews in section 16 for a more detailed explanation of thisfeature.

Font Book in Mountain Lion, 10.8

The preferences add a new option and removes two others. Instead of having Font Book simply disabling conflictingfonts, you can choose to have them sent to the trash to permanently resolve the conflict. This is not without problems,though. See section 16. The removed options are validating fonts before installing, and asking before automaticallyactivating fonts. The latter option is now simply on, or off.

Resetting Font Book's database

At times, Font Book's database can become corrupt. Usually from opening too many fonts, or opening fonts that aredamaged. When you activate fonts with Font Book using the original method, not only are all fonts you've ever activatedcopied to the Fonts folder chosen in its preferences, but those fonts are also added as entries in its database (Librarysets do not copy the fonts, but still do become entries in the database). Font Book uses this database to keep track ofwhich fonts are active and which are not. The more there are, the longer it takes for your Mac to start up as Font Bookmust compare each font to the information in the database during startup to determine if a given font should be on oroff. If the database becomes damaged, it can take a very long time for your Mac to start up to the desktop. If it's reallymangled, your Mac may not finish booting at all. Another symptom of a damaged database is not being able to activateor deactivate fonts from Font Book's interface.

Manually removing fonts from your system will also "damage" Font Book's database, so to speak. Font Book does notcorrect itself when you manually remove fonts that are listed in its database. Not even after a restart. It then containslinks to non existent fonts which causes the program to behave in the same manner as a corrupt database. You'll findthat you cannot activate or deactivate certain fonts, or any at all.

Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion each have their own methods for resetting Font Book.Dr. Smoke, as he is known at the Apple Discussions forums, is the noted author of "Troubleshooting Mac OS X". He haskindly made the information for resetting Font Book freely available at his web site. See Undoing Font Book for detailedinstructions for the version of OS X you are using.

There are no instructions for Lion or Mountain Lion at Dr. Smoke's site, but the Snow Leopard instructions listed thereapply to them also. The instructions remove the font cache files themselves for the current logged in user, but do notreset Font Book's database.

To reset Font Book completely in Snow Leopard, 10.6.x through Mountain Lion, 10.8.x, do the following.

1) Restart your Mac and immediately hold down the Shift key when you hear the startup chime to boot into Safe Mode.Keep holding the Shift key until OS X asks you to log in (you will get this screen on a Safe Mode boot even if your Mac isset to automatically log in). Let the Mac finish booting to the desktop and then restart normally. This will clear FontBook's database and the cache files for the user account you logged into in Safe Mode.

In Leopard or earlier, any font sets you have created will be gone. Also, all fonts in the three main Fonts folders (System,Library, your user account) will now be active, regardless of their state beforehand.

2) Clear all font cache files from the system and restart. The Terminal method for this is explained at the very end ofsection 17. The next time you launch Font Book, it will create a new database.

Removing Font Book

As noted in section one, you really, really don't ever want more than one font manager on your hard drive at a time. Soif you don't use Font Book, it should be removed. You also need to remove its database. Leaving Font Book's databaseon the drive can interfere with other font managers, even if the Font Book application itself isn't running, or no longereven exists on the hard drive. OS X will read this database if it exists during startup, or logging into another account.Based on what that database says, OS X will fight to keep fonts active the database says are supposed to be, possiblypreventing your preferred font manager from operating correctly.

1) Open Font Book, then its preferences. Uncheck the box for "Alert me if system fonts change". Close the preferencesand shut down Font Book. Put the Font Book application in the trash and delete it.

2) Restart your Mac and immediately hold down the Shift key when you hear the startup chime to boot into Safe Mode.Keep holding the Shift key until OS X asks you to log in (you will get this screen on a Safe Mode boot even if your Mac isset to automatically log in). Let the Mac finish booting to the desktop and then restart normally.

Identical to a reset, this will clear Font Book's database and the cache files for the user account you logged into in SafeMode. In Leopard or earlier, any font sets you have created will be gone. Which doesn't matter in this case since so isFont Book. The main goal in this step is to remove the orphaned Font Book database. With the Font Book application nolonger on the hard drive, a new one cannot be created. Which is what we want.

3) Clear all font cache files from the system and restart. The Terminal method for this is explained at the very end ofsection 17.

Removing Font Book in Lion and Mountain Lion

Apple has protected both the Applications and Utilities folders for any program installed by the OS. This makes it a bitmore difficult to remove Font Book, but not impossible. If you try to trash Font Book from the desktop, the OS statesFont Book can't be modified or deleted because it's required by Mac OS X. Don't take this message to mean Font Book isnow an immutable part of the OS. Lion and Mountain Lion say this about anything it installed which you try to deletefrom the Applications or Utilities folders. It's pretty hard to believe that Chess, Photo Booth, Stickies, or quite a fewothers are "required" by OS X. It will run just fine without them.

1) Open Font Book, then its preferences. Uncheck the box for "Alert me if system fonts change". Close the preferencesand shut down Font Book.

2) Open the Terminal application in the Utilities folder. Highlight and copy the following blue colored line, then paste itinto Terminal. You can of course type the command in yourself, but be very careful to enter it exactly as shown. UNIXshows no mercy for any misplaced or mistyped characters.

sudo rm -R /Applications/Font\ Book.app

Press Enter. You will be asked for your admin password. Type it in (Terminal does not return on screen what you'retyping for a password) and press Enter. Font Book will disappear from the Applications folder. Close Terminal.

If you prefer not to use Terminal, you can remove Font Book via the desktop. Highlight Font Book and pressCommand+I, or choose Get Info from the the top menu bar. Click on the lock at the lower right of the Get Info dialoguebox and enter your Administrator password. Expand the Sharing & Permissions heading if necessary. There are threepermissions states, the first of which is already Read & Write. Change the other two, which are currently Read only, toRead & Write. Close the Get Info box. You can now move Font Book to the trash with no interference from the OS.

Then follow the steps 2 and 3 above under Removing Font Book.

7) Required fonts for OS 9 (Classic)

For the OS 9 Classic mode, look in the /System Folder/Fonts/ folder. The only ones that must be present are:

CharcoalChicagoGenevaMonaco

If your Mac is capable of booting directly into OS 9, you can use Suitcase (version X or earlier), Adobe Type ManagerDeluxe or Master Juggler to open any other fonts you prefer to have open (Font Book is an OS X application and will notrun directly under OS 9). Otherwise, these four fonts are the only ones that must be present for OS 9; whether bootedinto OS 9, or running as Classic within OS X. If you have any other fonts in that folder, move them out. ParticularlyHelvetica and Courier, which with a default install of OS 9 will be in that Fonts folder and will conflict with the OS X orPostScript versions you may wish to use instead.

8) Various other fonts your can move or remove

You can remove all of the OpenType fonts installed by InDesign or the Adobe suite (CS, CS2 and CS3) so they aren'tactive when using those programs. InDesign or the Adobe suite opens them from its own font subfolder, so while

they're available in the Adobe applications, other programs can't see them. The location for these OpenType fonts is/Applications/Adobe InDesign CS/Fonts/. Although more commonly, the location is /Library/ApplicationSupport/Adobe/Fonts/. You'll need to check both locations depending on which versions you've installed. Whether youinstall the Creative Suite, or the individual applications (Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign; CS and CS2 versions), quite afew OpenType fonts will be installed in the latter folder. While no other applications or the OS will see those fonts, all ofthe CS and CS2 programs will. Move those fonts to another location for future use. Again, if you want to use thoseOpenType fonts for any program, you can activate them with Font Book, Suitcase, FontAgent Pro, Master Juggler orother font manager. You will also find a subfolder at /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts/Reqrd/. Do not removethat folder or any of its contents. The Adobe applications require those fonts and will not launch without them.

The Adobe CS3 through CS6 applications now install all OpenType fonts they come with into the /Library/Fonts/ folder.These can all be removed. Those fonts required by the CS3 through CS6 applications are buried where only the Adobeprograms can find them. There is no need for you to locate them. As in earlier versions, only the Adobe applications willsee and use its required fonts.

Check the fonts in your ~/Library/Fonts/ folder. Again, look for duplicate fonts that conflict with the same name asthose you prefer to use as a PostScript version and remove them.

If you have installed Acrobat or the free reader, you will find more PostScript versions of Helvetica and Courier in theseapplication's Support folders. Since none of them are in a location that will be automatically activated by OS X, they can(and need to be) left alone. Only those applications that installed them will use those fonts if they are not already activeotherwise.

You cannot use .dfonts in the Classic environment. Legacy OS 9 TrueType fonts have their data stored in the resourcefork of the file, while a .dfont stores the data in the data fork. Hence the name .dfont, short for data fork font. If youopen a .dfont with any font manager, your OS X applications will be able to use them, but OS 9 Classic applications willnot understand how to read or use these fonts, even if they have been copied to the OS 9 /System Folder/Fonts/ folder.If there is any particular .dfont you wish to use in Classic, you can convert it to an OS 9 TrueType suitcase font using autility such as dfontifier. This application quickly and easily creates a new font that OS 9 can use by dragging anddropping the .dfont you want to use in Classic onto the dfontifier application. You then open the converted font forClassic. dfontifier has been end-of-lifed by the author and will work in OS X only through Tiger, 10.4.x. For othermeans of translating fonts, you can use FontLab Studio, Fontographer, TransType or the free open source FontForge.

The retail Snow Leopard disk includes fonts intended for iWork, even if you didn't purchase the Box Set. In SnowLeopard, where they first appeared, I had originally thought this may have been a production error, but the same fontsare installed by Lion and Mountain Lion. So for whatever reason, Apple essentially gives you these fonts, even if youdon't own iWork. In the /Library/Application Support/Apple/Fonts/iWork/ folder, you will find 25 .dfonts (24 in Lion, 25in Mountain Lion), which comprise a total of 37 individual type faces (33 in Lion, 37 in Mountain Lion). Because of thefolder they are in, they are not automatically seen or used by the system. However, you can open them with any fontmanager in the usual manner, giving you some unexpected extra free fonts. This isn't a bonus for everyone though.These fonts will only activate in Snow Leopard or later. Any earlier versions of OS X cannot use them. If you wish toobtain these fonts for Leopard or earlier, you can install the iWork '09 trial (may no longer be available). It will installcopies of the same 25 .dfonts found in Snow Leopard, which do work in previous versions of OS X.

If you really feel like digging, Lion also installs 23 .ttf fonts intended for X11. They are in the/user/X11/share/fonts/TTF/ folder. These fonts are not installed by default in Mountain Lion.

A few others you can copy include three within the Game Center app. Right click on Game Center and choose ShowPackage Contents. Drill down to Contents > Resources > Fonts. You will find three fonts. Make sure to copy them outso you don't break the Game Center app.

9) Do you need a font manager?

Do you need to use a font manager at all? Actually, no. You can activate fonts by placing them into any of the Fontsfolders of your hard drive mentioned in section 6 and removing them when you want those fonts closed. Forconvenience sake, I would suggest always using the common /Library/Fonts/ folder. Fonts placed in this folder will beactive to all users of that Mac. If there is some font you don't want other users of that Mac to have access to, place themin your user account fonts folder, which is located at ~/Library/Fonts/. The most convenient way to use this method isto create an alias of the Fonts folder you want to use on the desktop. That way, you don't have to keep opening the harddrive and clicking down through the folders of the disk hierarchy to get to it.

There are disadvantages to this method though. One is that fonts activated this way will not be available to programs

running in Classic. Also, you run the risk of damaging fonts by constantly moving, or copying and deleting them fromthe folder you're using to open and close them with. For these reasons, I do suggest using a font manager.

10) What is a font suitcase and why do we have them?

In the early days, computers had very limited amounts of RAM. Partly due to the fact that it was extremely expensive, somost computers were outfitted with far less RAM than could be installed. This required the OS and applications to be asfrugal with RAM usage as possible. Each font you activate takes up a small amount of RAM, so the Mac OS limited thenumber of fonts you could activate to 128. In OS 9, since computers generally had more available RAM, this wasincreased to 512. Designers however, often wanted, or needed to have more fonts open at a time then the OS wouldallow. Especially for something like a catalogue. The solution (more like a workaround) was to enclose fonts in asuitcase. The suitcase itself was counted as only one item by the OS in the Fonts folder, so you could open a few,dozens, or hundreds of fonts by enclosing them in a suitcase. Having fonts enclosed in a suitcase was also the only waythe Mac OS would recognize fonts before OS X.

Using suitcases has become unnecessary on today's computers with gigabytes of RAM and more capable operatingsystems. You see that with OpenType fonts. Each face of a font (italic, bold, etc.) is a file unto its own (those with a .ttfextension) rather than being placed together in a suitcase. Not that the usage of suitcases has ended. It's a veryconvenient way of keeping a font set together. Apple's .dfonts are suitcase files which contain the individual TrueTypefonts for that family of fonts. There are four types of suitcase fonts currently in use.

1) Mac legacy TrueType suitcase fonts from OS 9 and earlier. These are 8 bit fonts limited to 256 characters, or glyphs.The suitcase can contain up to 999 individual TrueType or bitmap fonts. They can be of any font family. All data isstored in the resource fork of the fonts. It's not at all unusual to see a mix of fonts found in programs such as greetingcard and banner makers. They'll give you a font suitcase named something like "Card Designer Fonts". You see just theone item on your desktop, but contains as many individual fonts as they put in it.

2) Type 1 PostScript fonts. These are two part fonts. One file is a suitcase containing all of the low resolution bitmapscreen fonts. The rest are the outline printer fonts. As an example, here's Adobe Garamond.

Adobe GaramondAGarBolAGarBolItaAGarItaAGarRegAGarSemAGarSemIta

The first file which I highlighted in green is the font suitcase of bitmap screen fonts. The rest are the individual outlineprinter fonts. Both must be in the same folder in order to work. When placed in a Fonts folder or activated with a fontmanager, the OS or manager only looks in the suitcase for the available type faces.

If you have the printer outline font for the italic version of a font, but the screen font for the italic face is missing fromthe suitcase, then the italic font will not work. If you have the outline fonts without the matching suitcase, then none ofthem will work. In reverse, if you have the suitcase screen font for bold, but not the bold outline printer font, the boldfont will show up as available in your font lists, but the printed output will be very low quality since the system will beforced to print the font from the 72 dpi screen resolution bitmap font in the suitcase. Screen fonts in the suitcase thatare missing the matching outline printer font are known as orphaned fonts. All data for Type 1 PostScript fonts is storedin the resource fork. They also are are 8 bit fonts limited to 256 glyphs.

3) Apple TrueType .dfonts. They are essentially the same as the legacy Mac TrueType fonts from OS 9 and earlier withthree major differences. The data is stored in the data fork of the font rather than the resource fork. They are Unicodefonts. And like OpenType fonts, they are 16 bit fonts which can contain 65,536 glyphs. However, they are not OpenTypefonts as they have a different font table.

4) TrueType Collection. These fonts have a .ttc extension. Similar to a .dfont, it is a suitcase containing multipleTrueType fonts. Apple, for the most part, has moved to this suitcase type in Snow Leopard and later.

11) FFIL and LWFN. What are they and which is which?

There are a fair number of explanations to be found on the web as to what FFIL and LWFN are supposed to stand for.But it's much easier than that. They are the Type codes of the respective files. At the time Type 1 PostScript fonts werecreated, the Mac OS kept track of what file was what and was owned by which application by its Type and Creator codes.The Type code of a font suitcase is FFIL. For the outline printer font, it's LWFN. OS X can still use them, but Type andCreator codes are being replaced by a more modern method, known as Uniform Type Identifiers.

Many Type and Creator codes have a meaning attached to them. Others don't. Or at least they're not obvious. For AdobePhotoshop, an EPS file saved by the application has the meaningful Type code of EPSF. But the Creator code for any filesaved from Photoshop is 8BIM. I've never heard what that's supposed to stand for, if anything. So while there mayactually be a phrase that FFIL and LWFN are an acronym for, from what I've been able to find, they are nothing morethan the assigned Type codes.

While you could call a .dfont an FFIL file since it is a suitcase, it's not a Type 1 PostScript suitcase. Having a differentType and/or Creator code is what helps the Mac OS keep similar items from being opened in the wrong application ordefined incorrectly. In reality though, .dfonts don't normally even have Type and Creator codes.

A reader informed me that he was a beta tester for Photoshop v 1.01b. That version added 8 bit color support, whichwas huge at the time. The Creator code for Photoshop then became 8BIM, short for 8 Bit Image Map. A former employeeof Adobe has confirmed the most commonly seen meanings for FFIL and LWFN found on the web. They are; LWFN =LaserWriter Font, FFIL = Font File. Thanks to both for your contributions.

12) External vs. internal font names

How many free TrueType fonts have you downloaded and found that many of them show up in your font lists with thename "New"? There's a reason for that. With all fonts, the name of the file you see on your desktop has absolutelynothing to do with the names that show up in your applications. That is controlled solely by the font's internalname. Those free fonts were likely created by someone who didn't know they needed to, forgot to, or just plain didn'tcare about assigning a proper internal name to their creation. Windows TrueType fonts in particular, even thoseincluded with commercial applications are a constant source of this type of confusion. It's not at all unusual for aWindows TrueType font to have a file name of TT145B3.TTF, but shows up in your application as its internal name of"Bumblebee". To be fair, this can be a problem with any Mac font suitcase too since there's no easy way to tell how manyfonts are in the suitcase, or what names they'll produce in your font lists until activated.

Thankfully, the designers of Mac fonts have almost always been kind enough to give the fonts they create descriptivefile names, like the Adobe Garamond example above. Still, the name of the suitcase is no true indicator of the fontnames that will show up in your programs, but historically have been on the Mac.

Assigning the internal name is something the font's creator must do when using a font creation program such asFontLab or Fontographer. You can also use these programs to change the internal name of a font, or assign one wherethe original creator of the font didn't. Like those three hundred free fonts you have that all show up in your font lists as"New".

13) What is a font conflict?

In order to understand how font conflicts occur, it was first necessary to explain internal font names. The shortestexplanation of a font conflict is that two or more fonts you have activated are declaring the same internal font name tothe OS.

Fonts are actually little programs. They don't just sit on the hard drive waiting to be called on. When you activate them,each individual font takes up a small amount of RAM. Which, among a few other things, is to load the internal name theOS displays in your applications. Multiple names at once if it's a suitcase containing more than one TrueType, .dfont orType 1 PostScript font. Meaning, if the suitcase contains 30 fonts, it will open 30 separate tags in RAM.

So let's say you activate a font with a file name of Courier and its internal name is also Courier. Then you activate asecond font with a file name of Courier Plus. However, the designer made its internal name Courier. You now have twofonts declaring the same name in RAM with the obvious conflict — more than one active font saying it is Courier. Whenyou go to choose them in your application, how can the OS or the application possibly know which one you mean touse? The answer of course is, they can't.

Various things happen when you have font conflicts. Sometimes the font you just opened with the same internal namewill take precedence over the one that was already open. Other times, the font that was already active with that name

will be the one to continue to show up in your programs, the new one won't. Rarely, if ever, will you see more than onefont with the same name show up in your lists. As often as not, active fonts with duplicate internal names won't show upin any program. Quark XPress is very good at having fonts disappear from its lists when there is a conflict. This is not abad thing and I wish more applications would do that. It's essentially letting you know almost immediately that you havea font conflict by not showing you a font you're expecting to see in its list of available fonts.

While OS X, 10.5.x Leopard no longer supports the Classic environment, it will still see any fonts in an OS 9 /SystemFolder/Fonts/ folder. So if you are experiencing font conflicts and can find no cause for them in the standard OS X Fontsfolders, check to see if an OS 9 folder for Classic is still on your system. I can no longer test it, but this also may applyto Snow Leopard and later.

Conflicting internal names is exactly what the issue is between Apple's supplied versions of Helvetica in Leopardthrough Mountain Lion, and older Type 1 PostScript fonts. Apple gave almost every individual type face the exact sameinternal names as the Type 1 PostScript versions. Since the OS protects the system fonts from being disabled, you can'topen your preferred versions of Helvetica. This can be circumvented though by following the instructions in section 5.

14) Are you a good font, or a bad font?

We've described font conflicts, but not what happens when they occur, other than a font you expect to be available maydisappear. There are more problems which can occur with fonts other than just conflicting internal names.

One issue is damaged fonts. Just like an application, fonts take up space in RAM. How much RAM they should reside inis normally pretty small. However, a damaged font, just like a damaged program, will do things it is not supposed to.With fonts, the most common issue from damage is memory leakage. A font may normally only take up a few Kbytes ofRAM, but a damaged font can step outside the amount of RAM the OS thinks it is supposed to be using. When thishappens, the font may overwrite data being used in adjacent RAM by another active application, or the OS itself. It isn'thard to figure out what happens next. Data the OS or application may need, or be looking for is gone. Disabling the fontmay release the RAM back to the assigned program or OS, but the damage is already done. In the case of an application,you will need to shut it down and relaunch it in order for it to behave correctly again. The OS would likely require arestart.

All other font issues are in how they are built. Free fonts are the number one source of these font problems.

Free fonts known to be bad are Alien League and Brady Bunch. Both have an incorrect internal name. There are severalname fields that need to be filled in by the font's creator. Among them are the PS Font Name, Full Name, Menu Nameand FOND Name. In the case of both fonts mentioned here, three of the fields have the same name as what the font issupposed to be, but both have Arial in the Full Name. So both conflict with the real Arial font. Another is Radioactive. Ithas an incorrect PS Font Name which causes it to conflict with Times New Roman. These are just three I know of. I'msure there are many more.

If you want to see the effects of this (it's harmless), download the Brady Bunch font and activate it. You can easily findthis font by using "font+Brady Bunch" (without the quotes) as a web search. Google makes heavy use of Arial in the textit returns for a search. When you display such a page, Brady Bunch gets in the way of the regular Arial (Roman) font.Arial Bold will still be correct since that's a different internal name and a separate font, but all regular Arial text willdisplay in the Brady Bunch font. Now that you've seen it, deactivate the Brady Bunch font, toss it in the trash andeverything will return to normal.

Newer info on Alien League. I don't know if it's due to this article, but Alien League has been updated and can now bedownloaded from most sites as a correctly functioning font. There are still bad copies out there, but they are actuallygetting very difficult to find. You can't go by the name of the font since both a bad copy and a fixed version are namedalien5.ttf. Without a font editor to view the internal names with, you can't really know which is which without activatingit and seeing if Arial suddenly gets trumped by Alien League.

With most free fonts, there are multiple common errors which they may have. This can include outlines that make upthe shape of a character having far more points than necessary to define a curve; having segments which overlap, pathsrunning the wrong direction, and/or have stray anchor points. If you are unfamiliar with vector drawing, you draw ashape by placing down points. Between the points are Bézier line segments. You continue to draw your shape until youcome around to your first point and close the path by connecting the last anchor point to the first. A path in Photoshopis an example of a vector outline, as is any such shape drawn in Illustrator. Fonts shapes are drawn the same way.

Free fonts are as bad as they are mainly due to lack of effort on the part of their creator. Many are done by drawingcharacters by hand with pen and paper, scanning them into the computer and then using a tracing program to create

the paths. Naturally, these are rough. Problem is, most people make no attempt to clean them up, but rather just dropthe resulting path into the font they're creating. Yes, it saves a LOT of time creating your font, but the end result is thejunk they are.

Unnecessary points make the vector to raster processor work a lot more than it should have to when displaying the fontto your screen and printing. Granted, computers do this so fast you'd have a hard time measuring the time differencebetween a well drawn font and a poor one, but it's still an indication of quality over slap-it-together. Overlappingsegments (Bézier lines) cause a break in an outline that shouldn't exist. If a path is running the wrong direction, variousthings happen, depending on the character's shape. Take the letter A, for example. Depending on the directions of theouter and inner path (for the hole in the middle), the character may display as just a solid triangle where the hole is, butinvisible where it should be solid. A stray point is an anchor point that connects to nothing. Stray points can beparticularly bad for RIPs. When the RIP comes across one, it sees the point, but it has no other instructions then what todo with it. It can't draw anything since a single anchor point goes nowhere and isn't a shape unto itself. It's not a line, sothe RIP can't draw one. The RIP can't fill a shape since there is none. Error handling may get the RIP by the problem, butmay otherwise cause it to crash.

While there are a handful of good free fonts out there, the vast majority are worth exactly what you paid for them.

15) Fonts you can and cannot use in OS X

There are quite a few fonts which can be used in OS X. Others are obsolete or incompatible.

Fonts which can be used in OS X:

Apple Data Fork Fonts (.dfont) - A Unicode TrueType suitcase variation which allows for 65,536 characters per font.

Mac legacy TrueType - Also a TrueType suitcase font, normally with no file extension. 8 bit fonts limited to 256characters.

Mac Type 1 PostScript - Paired fonts comprised of a suitcase of screen fonts and the individual outline printer fonts.Most often without any file extensions. Sometimes the suitcase of screen fonts will have an extension that helps definethat it is the screen font suitcase, but aren't otherwise necessary. The file name extensions found on some suitcase filesvary between .bmap, .scr and a few others. Originally, 8 bit fonts with a 256 glyph limit. Encoding options were updatedlater to allow for some extension of the number of allowed glyphs.

An example of a Mac Type 1 PostScript font can be seen in section 10 with Adobe Garamond. As you can see, "paired"doesn't necessarily mean only two items. There is always just one suitcase of screen fonts, but there can be any numberof printer fonts, which will each have at least one matching screen font within the suitcase.

Multiple Master (Mac OS X 10.2 and later only) - A Type 1 PostScript variant. Rarely used in production, but an integralpart of Preview and the Adobe Acrobat Reader. While Preview and the Acrobat Reader do depend on certain MultipleMaster fonts for their operation, they are no longer produced by Adobe and have been declared obsolete.

OpenType (.otf .ttf and .ttc) - Unlike the majority of fonts between the Mac OS and Windows, OpenType fonts areUnicode and have the advantage of being cross platform compatible. 16 bit fonts capable of having up to 65,536characters. Files with a .otf extension which contain only CFF data will always be a PostScript font. TrueType OpenTypefonts will have either a .ttf or .ttc extension. But unfortunately, this is not necessarily true. Adobe's guidelines allowsdevelopers to use .otf for a TrueType structured OpenType font if they wish. So knowing whether or not the .otf fontyou have is actually a PostScript font just by looking at it is impossible.

There are ways to find out, though. Activate your OpenType fonts and then launch Quark XPress. In the list of fonts,Quark separates OpenType fonts by type. A TrueType font will have the standard green and black OpenType icon.PostScript OpenType fonts will be shown with a red and black icon. Suitcase Fusion 2 through 4 also note which type offonts they are. A PostScript font will be shown in the Type column as OpenType - PS, and a TrueType version asOpenType - TT.

Windows TrueType (.ttf) - The Windows version of the original 8 bit, 256 character TrueType fonts.

Windows TrueType Collection (.ttc) - Windows version similar to Mac TrueType suitcase fonts. They can contain morethan one TrueType font in a single package. This is again referring to the original 8 bit version, even though the same.ttf and .ttc file extensions are used for the OpenType versions.

Fonts which cannot be used in OS X:

Apple bitmapped fonts from OS 7.5 and earlier

Linux Type 1 PostScript - Paired fonts with .pfa and .afm extensions.

Type 3 PostScript - A fairly short lived PostScript variant. They allowed for the full use of the PostScript language suchas shading, color and fill patterns. However, they lacked hinting, an important typography attribute. Obsolete.

Old, very old third party bitmapped fonts. Way back before TrueType or Type 1 PostScript fonts. There were nooutline vector fonts for printing. Each point size for a typeface had to be built as a high resolution bitmap file from acompanion program, or purchased separately. Good riddance.

Fonts which can sort of be used in OS X:

Windows Type 1 PostScript - Paired fonts with .pfb and .pfm extensions. Normally, these fonts have never been ableto be used on the Mac. Not in OS9 or OS X. Technically, you still can't. You can't open them with any font manager oruse them by directly placing the fonts in one of OS X's or OS 9's standard Fonts folders. But the Adobe applications(Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign), starting with the CS2 suite, can indeed read these fonts. Place them in the/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts/ folder and you will be able to use Windows Type 1 PostScript fonts with theAdobe programs. The CS4 through CS6 programs do not create the Fonts folder mentioned. But all you have to do is goto the /Library/Application Support/Adobe/ folder and create a new folder named Fonts. An example of a WindowsType 1 PostScript font is as follows:

DSSCR___.PFMDSSCR___.PFB

This particular font is Dorchester Script MT. All Windows Type 1 fonts consist of two files for one complete typeface. A.pfm file for the font metrics, and a .pfb file for the binary data. You must have both in order for the font to work. Ifthere were a bold version of this font, you would have another uniquely named matching pair of .pfm and .pfb files.

Fonts for Classic (OS 9):

Because OS 9 expects fonts to be created a certain way, it cannot use some fonts that OS X can. Legacy TrueType fromOS 9 and earlier and Type 1 PostScript fonts have the data in their resource fork, which is where OS 9 expects to findthe font data. The OS X .dfont, while it is a TrueType font, cannot be used in OS 9. At least in part because the data is inthe data fork of the font. Hence, OS 9 sees nothing. The same is true of Windows .ttf TrueType fonts. The data in is thedata fork rather than the resource fork, so OS 9 again sees nothing. Very few applications for OS 9 were ever updated tounderstand OpenType fonts. Windows Type 1 PostScript fonts are completely incompatible and cannot be used by eitherOS 9 or X, with the above exception for the Adobe applications.

16) Font manager reviews

I've used or at least tested every font manager mentioned in this article. To help you make a more informed choice as towhich one you may want to use, I'm going to list the pros and cons of each one as I see them. These are of course mypersonal opinions, so you are certainly free to disagree. They are also not exhaustive reviews, but instead focus on themore common features or omissions that make a given font manager easier or harder to use. Reviewed here are themost current versions available at the time of writing, so some features may not be available depending on the versionyou are using. They are; FontAgent Pro 4.202, Font Book in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, FontExplorer X Pro 3.1,MasterJuggler 3.0.4, Suitcase Fusion 4 (15.0.2) and Fontcase 2.0.3. Since Classic went away with Leopard in late 2007,I'm no longer going to to mention it as a pro or con.

FontAgent Pro

Pros:

1) Copies all fonts you activate to a separate location in your user account. So even if you remove the original font or nolonger have access to it, you can still activate the font from its working folder.2) Has a method to create libraries which contain same named fonts as in other sets.3) Reliable automatic font activation.4) Ability to manage system fonts.5) Font Savant technology virtually ensures auto activation will open the correct version of a font. MagicMatch will giveyou close optional choices when the original isn't available.

Cons:

1) Fonts cannot be activated in place. Everything is copied to its working folder.2) Cannot manage system fonts without moving all of them to a special location.3) Will not let you choose which font to activate when trying to turn on a conflicting font that is already active in anotherset.

Fontcase

Pros:

1) Can create font sets.2) Prevents font conflicts by way of not allowing the same font to be activated from anywhere but the first instance itwas added in the interface.3) Has some nice font viewing and print features that other managers don't have.4) Stores all fonts in its vault, so fonts you no longer have access to can still be activated.

Cons:

1) Fonts cannot be activated in place. Everything is copied to its working vault file.2) No auto activation feature.3) Font sets cannot have the same fonts as another set.

Font Book

Pros:

1) It's free.2) Can create font sets.3) Resolves font conflicts. Much better control in Lion and Mountain Lion than previous versions.4) Can deactivate fonts in the /Library/Fonts/ and ~/Library/Fonts/ folders to prevent any application from seeingthem.5) Can create Library sets to open fonts in place.6) Has an automatic activation feature.

Cons:

1) Different library sets can contain the same fonts, but they must be linked from exactly the same location in order toactivate them.2) Resolving fonts always favors those in the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder. This makes it impossible to activateanother type of font with the same name without having to first manually remove the conflicting font in the Systemfolder.3) The "All Fonts" listing does not actually include all fonts.

FontExplorer X Pro

Pros:

1) Can create full sets that include font names already listed in other sets.2) Can deactivate fonts in the /Library/Fonts/ and ~/Library/Fonts/ folders to prevent any application from seeingthem.3) Can activate fonts in place. No need to create copies of the fonts you activate.4) Can also be set up to behave like FontAgent Pro and copy all activated fonts to a working folder to be managed fromthere.5) Has an automatic font activation feature.6) Let's you decide which font to activate when opening a conflicting font.7) Greatly improved interface and options in the paid version.

Cons:

1) Auto activation only looks for the correct internal font names. You could activate the wrong version of a font on anexisting project.

MasterJuggler

Pros:

1) Can create full sets that include font names already in other sets.2) Activates fonts in place. No need to create copies of the fonts you activate.

Cons:

1) Makes no attempt to resolve font conflicts. Nor does it give you a function to do so. You must search through the listof fonts in its interface manually to find and resolve them yourself.2) Makes no attempt to stop you from activating fonts that will conflict.3) No auto activation feature.4) Cannot deactivate fonts in the /Library/Fonts/ or ~/Library/Fonts/ folders.

Suitcase Fusion 4

Pros:

1) Can create full sets that include font names already in other sets.2) Can activate fonts in place. No need to create copies of the fonts you activate.3) Has a reliable automatic font activation feature.4) Font Sense technology virtually ensures auto activation will open the correct version of a font.5) Let's you decide which font to activate or keep active when opening a conflicting font.6) Individual fonts in a suitcase can be activated or deactivated rather than all or nothing.7) Can deactivate fonts in the /Library/Fonts/ and ~/Library/Fonts/ folders to prevent any application from seeingthem.8) Has a vault option if you prefer to store copies of fonts that have been added.9) Can control conflicting system fonts automatically.10) Quickmatch feature helps you locate fonts which are similar to each other.

Cons:

1) Conflicting fonts cannot be acted upon individually.

Font Book is of course included with OS X, so you can play around with it as much as you want to see what it can andcan't do. FontExplorer X Pro, Suitcase Fusion 4 and FontAgent Pro all have versions you can download and use as fullyfunctional software for 30 days. Plenty of time to run them through the paces. MasterJuggler 3 is the only offering thatrequires you to purchase the product in order to see what it can do. No trial software is available. Fontcase is availablefor download and will run as fully functional software for a 15 day trial period.

I included "Can manage system fonts" as a plus for FontAgent Pro only because the software is supposed to be able todo that. In reality, it doesn't do it very well. OS X does a very good job protecting fonts in the /System/Library/Fonts/folder from being deactivated. This can be a plus since it keeps the less knowledgeable user from turning off criticalfonts, especially Lucida Grande.

Suitcase Fusion 2 through 4 have solved the issue with the Helvetica system fonts. You don't need to move, or removeany fonts from the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder if you don't want to. There is no longer an option in the preferencesas to what to do with the system fonts, but if you activate for example, a Type 1 PostScript version of Helvetica (whichwill conflict with Apple's versions) Suitcase Fusion 2 through 4 automatically turn the system Helvetica fonts off! Whenyou deactivate your preferred version of Helvetica, Suitcase automatically turns the Apple versions back on. See section5 for more details.

Part of the original point of this article was to work around the inability of most font managers to disable fonts in thetwo main Fonts folders from their interface. By manually reducing the fonts on your system to only those listed insection one, it then doesn't matter that you can't control the remaining fonts since you shouldn't be trying to deactivatethem anyway. Still, that makes it a plus for Suitcase Fusion 4, FontExplorer X Pro and Font Book to be able to deactivatefonts in the /Library/Fonts/ or ~/Library/Fonts/ folders from its interface if you're uncomfortable about moving fontsout of those folders.

I consider full font sets a very big plus. When you have multiple projects going at once, you want to have a single set foreach project that includes every font it uses, not just those that don't already exist in another set. That makes your stopto your font manager a quick and painless process when you can simply turn off set three and turn on set ten. No needto search the other sets for fonts you still need activated. I also consider activating fonts in place a major plus. If youcan activate a font right from where it is, why bother copying it to another folder as Font Book, Fontcase and FontAgent

Pro insist on doing? The only advantage to that is if the fonts reside on removable media when you first activate them,so you may not have access to the originals later. But to avoid that, all you have to do is copy the fonts to your harddrive first. It's not like they take up a lot of space.

Font Book in Leopard through Mountain Lion now allow you to open fonts in place by using Library sets. But there arestill limitations to how you can add fonts. See below.

If opening fonts for OS 9 (Classic) is still important for you and you don't like manually moving fonts in and out of OS9's /System Folder/Fonts/ folder to activate/deactivate your fonts, then your only choices for font managers areFontAgent Pro 4 and MasterJuggler 3. With the Intel based Macs making OS 9 virtually obsolete, I wouldn't be surprisedif a future release of these two titles removes that ability. Starting with OS X Leopard, Apple has eliminated support forOS 9 entirely, so whether or not a font manager still supports Classic is a moot point if you're using Leopard, 10.5 orlater.

So here are my recommendations based on what I consider important. Please note that some of these descriptionsmay not apply to the version of a given font manager you are using. They are based on the versions which werecurrent at the time of writing and may be somewhat, to drastically different from older versions.

1) Suitcase Fusion 4: Suitcase has been around for a very long time and it shows. Polished, easy to use interface.Excellent font activation that will not let you create font conflicts. Top notch auto activation with Font Sense to virtuallyguarantee the exact same font will be activated that was used before in a document. Full font sets. Choice of which fontto activate or keep active when you try to activate a font that conflicts with one that's already on. Activation of fonts inplace. Suitcase Fusion 4 is incredibly stable. It is almost impossible to make it crash, even with the worst fonts. SuitcaseFusion 2 and later have eliminated the potentially dangerous option of deleting your original fonts after adding them tothe vault. Adding fonts to the vault now always leaves the originals intact.

Handling of conflicting fonts has been simplified. You choose in its preferences whether fonts you've just activated getturned on and the current active font off, or the existing font in use stays on. It's an all or nothing choice, so you can'tdo it on a font by font basis as you can in FontExplorer X Pro, or earlier versions of Suitcase. I always turn sets on andoff, with each set having every font I need for a project in them, so this is never an issue for me. Others may find itconstricting. This is actually a fairly recent change in this program's behavior. Before Fusion 2, you used to be able tochoose font by font whether to activate or skip on each conflicting font. Perhaps the function will return if enough usersrequest it. Fusion 3 added a font cache cleaning option within the interface. Version 4 introduced Quickmatch. To seewhat other goodies Extensis has added to Fusion 4, download the user guide from their web site.

When Extensis acquired Diamond Soft, they were able to add the best features of Font Reserve to Suitcase, hence thename Fusion. Notably from Font Reserve, Suitcase inherited Font Sense and the ability to deactivate individual fontswithin a font suitcase. Before, you had to either enable the whole suitcase or disable it. Suitcase Fusion 4 can controlfonts in the /Library/Fonts/ and ~/Library/Fonts/ folders. I would recommend you remove all but the most basic fontslisted in section one to get your system down to only the fonts it needs in the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder. It's up toyou then whether or not you want to empty out the /Library/Fonts/ and ~/Library/Fonts/ folders since they can becontrolled from within Suitcase Fusion 4.

Suitcase Fusion 4 continues to be my favorite font manager. The interface and preferences are even more simplifiedthan the original OS X versions or the initial version of Fusion. If you've used Suitcase for a long time, you feel likesomething's been taken away in the sparse looking interface of Fusion 2 through 4, but it's still a very powerful programwith even better options and features, while at the same time, removing other interface choices that really weren'tneeded. The new interface makes it even easier and almost goof proof for even a novice to use while still being, I think,the best font manager available for pros and new users alike.

2) FontExplorer X Pro: If Suitcase no longer existed, I wouldn't hesitate a moment to use this manager. Full font sets.Full choice of which font to activate or keep active when you try to activate a font that conflicts with one that's alreadyon. Allows you to deactivate fonts in the /Library/Fonts/ or ~/Library/Fonts/ folders. Activation of fonts in place.

During its initial setup, you get a check box to "Organize Font Files". This is where you determine how you wantFontExplorer X Pro to handle your fonts. If you leave the box unchecked, then fonts are always activated in place. Turnthe check box on, and it operates in the same manner as FontAgent Pro, by copying or moving the fonts you add to itsown storage space in your user account. If you change your mind later how you want FontExplorer X Pro to handle fonts,you can open its preferences and click on the Advanced tab. At the top, you'll find the same options you had during thefirst use setup.

Unlike FontAgent Pro, you can keep fonts that have been removed from the interface in storage, if you're using thatoption. A check box in the Advanced preference settings allows you to determine if items removed from the interface

also removes the associated fonts.

FontExplorer X Pro has a much improved interface (though still very busy compared to Suitcase) and new features.Compared to the original free versions, I find it less cluttered than before, and therefore easier to navigate. Importantfor newer computer users to be less intimidated or confused by a slew of buttons and menus.

Auto activation is still reported to be spotty. Fonts that should open with a document don't. If it still relies only onseeing the correct font name, then you could open the wrong version of a font and not know it. Suitcase Fusion 4 andFontAgent Pro have a method of avoiding this possibly very expensive error. Regardless of that, FontExplorer X Pro hasa raft of options to fully control your fonts.

3) FontAgent Pro: Auto activation is very reliable. Stable program that rarely crashes. Copies all activated fonts toanother location, which I don't find necessary. To create full font sets, use the Libraries option. You can't do this withSets. In the program preferences, turn on the option to "Enable multiple libraries". It won't work if you're thinking"Suitcase" and try to drag and drop your fonts into the Sets window. You must drop them into the Libraries window. Inthis way, you can always create full font sets in FontAgent Pro.

A seemingly odd thing with Libraries. I created a folder filled with random fonts and then copied that folder to anotherlocation. I dropped each folder of fonts into their own Library. Since they were exactly the same, they should create fontconflicts if you try to turn both Library sets on. They didn't. FontAgent Pro impossibly showed all fonts as active in bothsets. Examining the fonts where FontAgent Pro stores them showed why. There is only one copy of each font regardlessof how many entries there are of an identical font in the interface. So you aren't really turning on duplicate fonts.Conflicts will only appear if you try to activate different fonts that have the same internal names. This is both a goodand bad thing. It's nice to have one known good font used for all sets. It's bad when a client sends you a modified fontwhich then doesn't get added to your font storage folder because one by that name already exists. That's a disaster inthe making.

In a recent change to how FAP handles its stored fonts, it now lets you create separate subfolders for each library offonts you add, instead of automatically sorting them by name. This allows you to have multiple sets of stored fontswhich can have identical fonts. Big problem, though. The interface still lets you turn on what should be conflicting fontsas before. I once again imported two identical sets of fonts. Which in this version, actually had duplicate copies of everyfont under their own subfolders of the storage area. I turned one set on, then the other. As with the previously testedversion, 4.0.4, both sets under 4.202 showed as being active, which is impossible without creating font conflicts. Andas before, FAP said nothing about conflicting fonts. So even though you can now have multiple copies of the same fontsin storage, if one by that name is already active, that's the one which will be used and any subsequent request will beignored. All without telling you the font it just labeled green as active was never actually turned on, since anotheridentically named font is already active.

If you remove any fonts, sets or libraries from the interface, FontAgent Pro will also delete the related fonts from itsstorage location in your user account.

Version four's Font Savant technology, which is similar to Suitcase Fusion's Font Sense, makes FontAgent Pro a strongcontender. Having auto activation open exactly the same fonts as before is extremely important in a productionenvironment, saving you from both lost time and income because the wrong version of a font caused text to reflow.When the original font cannot be found, MagicMatch will show you the closest alternative it can find.

All in all, a nice font manager. But its biggest failure is that it never does anything to warn you that a font you think youturned on hasn't been, when another font by that name is already active. This can be a tremendously costly error inproduction.

4) Font Book: Simple, but effective. The Leopard version is identical to Snow Leopard. Allows you to deactivate fonts inthe /Library/Fonts/ or ~/Library/Fonts/ folders. However, lack of being able to easily choose which font to disable for afont conflict limits its use to the casual user. No complete font sets. Copies all activated fonts to another location, usingthe original method.

Library sets do allow you to activate fonts in place without fonts being copied to the Fonts folder designated in FontBook's preferences. There are issues though. While you can create multiple Library sets that include the same fonts, theymust be from the exact same location. Adding identical fonts from different locations will add them to the Library set,but then you can't activate either one once they've been disabled.

When you have conflicting fonts, those already installed in the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder always win. The oppositefonts will always be the one disabled. All others in the /Library/Fonts/ or ~/Library/Fonts/ folders can be controlled, butyou must do things in the correct order. If you tell Font Book to automatically resolve conflicts, the fonts which are

currently active are always the ones to remain active. If you want the conflicting font enabled, you must first deactivatethe active font. Then you you can activate the opposite font. This is true even in the conflict resolution interface.

Lion and Mountain Lion adds a greatly appreciated font conflict resolution interface. Instead of just blindly turning onefont or the other off (you have no idea which one, and it doesn't tell you), it presents a screen of the conflicting fonts.You can choose each in turn and select "Reveal in Finder". The folder the font is in will open and the file itself ishighlighted. You can now make an informed decision as to which font should be deactivated.

Now if only it worked. The conflict resolution screen isn't as straight forward as you would think. Just like disabling aconflicting font from the main screen, the currently active font is always the one to remain active. Even when using theoption to Resolve Manually. It doesn't matter which font you highlight, the inactive font remains that way. So manualdoesn't do anything different than automatic. Be very careful if you turn on Font Book's preference to move conflictingfonts to the trash. For example, let's say you have a font in the /Library/Fonts/ folder deactivated, and an identical fontactive from somewhere else (which you can do in a Library set). Now turn the font in the /Library/Fonts/ folder on. Sincethe font which was already active is always the one to remain on, when you resolve the conflict, the font in the/Library/Fonts/ folder will be deleted! Not kidding. Right out of the main Library folder. So not just you, but every useraccount on that Mac loses access to that font.

All of those extra Asian fonts that show up in Font Book's interface, which aren't anywhere in any of the various Fontsfolders, are actually buried in the Font Book application package itself. These 17 fonts are referred to as stub fonts (thename of the embedded folder). They don't show up in your applications as fonts you can use, but Font Book still liststhem in gray, non controllable fonts. I see no purpose for them at all, but there they are.

The way Font Book lists fonts continues to be a confusing mess. You would think "All Fonts" would actually show you allfonts listed in its interface. It doesn't. Neither "All Fonts" or the "Computer" heading will show you a single font that wasadded in a Library set. You must click on each Library set you have created in order to see what's active or inactive forthose fonts.

Font Book's main downfall is how easily its database is corrupted. When that happens, you suddenly can't activate oradd some fonts, deactivate those which are already active, have fonts show up in some applications but not others, etc.The only fix is to restart in Safe Mode and back again with a normal restart to clear Font Book's database. This is anokay font manager for light home use, but not a production environment. Font Book is improving, but is still sorelylacking in overall ability.

5) MasterJuggler: I rather expected a font manager from a company that produces the indispensable DiskWarrior tocreate a much better font manager than this. A font manager that won't stop you from activating conflicting fonts evenfrom its own interface is useless. You may as well not use a font manager at all and manually move fonts in and out ofthe /Library/Fonts/ or ~/Library/Fonts/ folders.

In its favor, MasterJuggler is a very stable program that does what it does do very well with full font sets and handlingeven bad fonts well. But it is very much a font manager that requires the user to fully understand how font conflictsoccur, how to avoid them, and how to resolve them on your own.

6) Fontcase: Fontcase has some nice interactive features that others don't, and is greatly improved over the last versiontested. But there are still issues. I don't care for any manager that insists on squirreling away fonts in the guise thatthey're less likely to be damaged that way. The vault is just as susceptible to damage as any other file on the hard drive.The new version eliminates the previous version's clumsy method of copying fonts you activate to your user accountFonts folder, and then deleting them from that location when you deactivate your fonts.

Font sets are still very limited. In the previous version, you could have a set with Bauhaus in it, with that being the firsttime Bauhaus was introduced to Fontcase. Then you add another set with Bauhaus. Bauhaus would show up in thesecond (or any subsequent) set, but could not be activated from there. You had to go to the the first placement of agiven font to do so. Adding any font as a single entry rather than in a set behaved the same way. If that font is alreadyin the interface somewhere else, your new entry would be added to the list, but the font could not be activated fromthere.

Their solution in version two for this issue was to simply not allow the user to add an identical font at all. Period. It willbe shown in the first set or individual entry it was originally added as, and nowhere else.

This brings about the same issue as in FontAgent Pro. A customer may have supplied a modified font without changingthe name. If that font already exists in Fontcase's database, it will not be added. While you can work around such asissue in FAP, it's impossible in Fontcase. Well, not impossible, but not at all easy. You would have to find and remove itsdatabase, forcing you to lose all stored fonts and start over. You can dig into the vault by right clicking on the item and

choosing "Show Package Contents". Then you can search through the contents to find the font you need to remove, butit shouldn't be this hard to manage more than one font with the same name.

This problem is one that wouldn't normally happen, but I wanted to test how it would handle duplicate system fonts. Icopied Geneva and Menlo out of the System folder into a new folder on the desktop and activated them. Even thoughthey were in a new folder, Fontcase treated them is if they were system fonts and would not let me deactivate them. Sonow I had a permanent font conflict with the added fonts and those actually in the System folder. The only fix was toshut down Fontcase and manually delete the fonts I had placed on the desktop. When launched again, Fontcase stillshowed the two fonts in its list as System fonts even though they were gone, but at least there was only one of eachtruly active now. Any other font manager correctly treated Geneva and Menlo as just plain ol' fonts which conflicted withthe ones in the System folder.

Like Font Book, Fontcase is a light use manager. For folks in prepress and design, its inability to control multipleversions of the same font makes it unusable.

17) How to handle font caches

All types of software create and maintain cache files. The OS, Photoshop, Office and numerous others. In all cases, thepurpose of a cache file is to access frequently used data faster than it usually can be from its original location. Sincewe're talking about fonts, we'll use them as an example. Any font activation causes the OS to create cached data ofthose fonts. This data is optimized for both faster retrieval and rendering than it would be to access the fontsthemselves every time a call is made to draw a font to the screen. If over time, you use a particular font less, eventhough it's active, the cached data for that font may eventually be removed from the cache in favor of those being usedmore frequently. If you use the font again, its data will be added back into the cache in the assumption that the data willonce again be needed more often. Hence, cache data is something that is always in flux, whether it's font data, data forthe OS itself, or any other program that use various types of caches.

Because that data is read from, and more importantly, written to so often, the data is bound to have errors introduced atsome time. When that happens, you see odd problems. With fonts, it's almost always garbled text caused by corruptfont caches. These can easily be cleared from the system with Font Finagler. Download and run the application. Firstclick the "Inspect Font Cache Files" button, then the "Clean Font Cache Files" button. You must then restart your Mac.Other utilities that can clear your font caches are Font Nuke, Cocktail, YASU and OnyX. The last three are powerfulutilities which can do far more than just cleaning font caches. If you are not familiar with these applications, then Iwould caution you in their use as you could cause your Mac to become non functional, requiring a reinstall of the OS.Font Finagler is the safer choice as it performs only the one function. However, Font Finagler hasn't been updated for awhile. Last I tested, it doesn't work in Snow Leopard or later. I now prefer OnyX for this task.

Suitcase and FontExplorer X Pro both come with cache cleaning tools. With Suitcase Fusion through Fusion 2, it's thebundled Font Doctor. The option in Font Doctor is under Tools > Clean Font Caches. Suitcase Fusion 3 and 4 haveincluded a cache cleaning choice in the main application so you don't have to launch Font Doctor. With Suitcase Fusion 3or 4 in the foreground, the option is under File > Clean Font Caches. This is a very thorough cleaning with SuitcaseFusion 3 or 4. It clears the OS X font cache files, and those for many third party apps which maintain their own separatefont cache files. FontAgent Pro includes a Smasher demo with its product, which has the ability to remove font cachefiles. But it must be purchased separately from FontAgent Pro.

FontExplorer X Pro has its tools broken down into three options:

Clean System Fonts Folder

This choice refers to the entire system, not just the System folder. What this tool does is move any font that is notinstalled as part of OS X to a new folder on your desktop. A very quick and easy way to separate the OS X supplied fontsfrom those you've added. This can be very helpful when you're having trouble tracking down font issues. Once you runthis option along with cleaning cache files and the remaining fonts are still misbehaving, then you know you need to atleast reinstall the OS X supplied fonts. See the instructions at the bottom of this article to see how.

Clean System Font caches

Clears all font cache files for both the system and the active user account.

Clean Application Font caches

Specific to clearing font cache files created by the Adobe apps, Quark XPress and Microsoft Office.

One fairly common problem that occurs with corrupt font caches (particularly in Tiger for some reason) are fonts inDashboard widgets suddenly being drawn as outlines instead of solid text. Clearing the font cache files usually fixes it.

There is a right way and a wrong way to remove cache files. Font Finagler and OnyX force you to do it the right way byrestarting immediately afterwards. So why is this right? As just noted, cache files are accessed frequently. If you removeany type of cache file and attempt to continue working, you could easily have just pulled the rug out from under anapplication that was reading, or worse, writing to a cache file that was removed during the cache cleaning operation.The consequences can be anywhere from minor to disaster. The rules for clearing cache files are simple, but need to befollowed to avoid potential data loss.

1) Quit all running applications. This is not an option. While it doesn't hurt to leave your font manager running, as longas it's in a static state (not actively being used in any way), the only "program" running should be the OS itself. If youwant to really be certain, shut down your font manager, too.

2) Use any of the utilities linked to in this section to remove the font cache files (Suitcase Fusion 3 and 4, andFontExplorer X Pro can also remove font cache data from an option within the application). If the program you use doesnot automatically force a restart, don't take that to mean it's okay to continue working. Restart your Mac immediately.Under no circumstances should you ever skip restarting after manually removing any type of cache data.

There are a few exceptions I know of. One is Microsoft Office. It has its own font cache data which can be removedwithout restarting your computer. Though you still must first shut down any running Office applications. After closingall Office apps, remove the following files:

For Office X and 2004, the location is:

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office Font Cache (11)

For Office 2008, the location is:

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2008/Office Font Cache (12)

For Office 2011, the location is:

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office 2011/Office Font Cache

The Office 2011 Service Pack 2 (version 14.2.0) changed the location of many preference files, including the font cachedata. It is now located at:

~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/Preferences/Office 2011/Office Font Cache

After removing the file, you can then launch any Office application to have it rebuild its font cache data.

In OS 10.5.x Leopard through 10.8.x Mountain Lion, you can also remove font cache files using the Terminalapplication.

Close all running applications. From an administrator account, open the Terminal app and enter the following command(or copy/paste it from here):

sudo atsutil databases -remove

This removes all font cache files maintained by OS X. Both for the system and the active user account. After running thecommand, close Terminal and immediately restart your Mac.

Font 911:

Q: "I removed Lucida Grande while cleaning out my fonts. Now my Mac won't boot. Help!"

A: There are three ways to get this critical font back onto your Mac.

1) Turn your Mac on and hold down the mouse button. This will cause the DVD/CD drive door to open so you can insertthe OS Install disk that came with your Mac, or commercial copy if you purchased it separately. After placing the disk inthe tray, close the drive by nudging the extended tray with your finger. Press and hold the power button until the Macturns off. Wait a few seconds and press the power button again. Immediately hold down the C key to boot to the Install

disk in the DVD/CD drive. Do not release the key until it is clear you have started up your Mac to the disk. Run the OSinstallation, making sure to choose the Archive and Install option. Also make sure to choose the options to maintainyour user settings. Once the install has finished, you can restart and your Mac should once again be able to boot to thehard drive. Your system will be at whatever level the disk you have is. So if your Install DVD/CD disk is 10.3.3, that'swhat version of OS will be on your Mac. You will need to download the appropriate Combo Updater from Apple's site torestore the system to a higher version.

2) This method is much less invasive or time consuming. The only drawback is that you need access to another Macrunning the same basic version of OS X (Panther or Tiger), and your Mac must support FireWire Target Mode. Macswhich support this function are listed in the Apple Knowledge Base Article HT1661. Place the non functioning Mac nextto a working Mac and connect the two directly to each other using a standard 6 pin FireWire 400 cable. It doesn't matterif the Macs are on or not. FireWire is a hot plugable connection and so will not damage anything by doing so, though itis easiest to have both Macs off to start with. If the functioning Mac is not already on, turn it on first and wait until it isin a ready state. If the non working Mac is on, turn it off by pressing the power button until it shuts off. Turn on the nonbooting Mac. Immediately hold down the T key to put the Mac into FireWire Target Mode. Keep holding the T key until alarge FireWire icon appears on the monitor. The hard drive of that Mac will now appear as a removable drive on theworking Mac. Open it as you would any other disk and copy the "Lucida Grande" font from the working Mac to the samelocation on the non functioning Mac. The location is /System/Library/Fonts/. Once copied, dismount the hard drive ofthe Mac in FireWire Target Mode by highlighting its icon and pressing Command+E. Or drag it to the Trash, which willchange to an Eject icon. Turn the non working Mac off again using the power button. Disconnect the FireWire cable.When you start your repaired Mac again, it should boot. Once started, run Disk Utility to Repair Permissions as the fontsin the System folder will have incorrect settings.

3) The third method is similar to the second. And that is to have an external FireWire drive with Tiger or Pantherinstalled on it. To use this method, your Mac must support booting to a FireWire device. Macs that support this featureare listed in the Apple Knowledge Base Article HT2699. Have your non functioning Mac off. Press and hold the powerbutton if necessary to power the computer down. Connect the external FireWire drive (can be FireWire 400 or 800) tothe Mac and turn the external drive on. Wait 10 seconds or so to give the drive time to get to a ready state. Turn on theMac and immediately hold down the Option key. Continue holding the key until you get a purple screen showing whichdrives have a bootable system on them and an arrow icon. This will take a minute or so as the Mac tries to determine ifthere's a network drive attached. Once it is done searching (the normal arrow mouse cursor will appear), select theexternal drive by clicking on its icon. Then click the large arrow icon to continue. The Mac will boot to the externaldevice. Once ready, you can then copy the LucidaGrande.dfont from the external drive to your main drive as describedin method two. As the Option key method of booting is a temporary choice, you don't need to open the SystemPreferences and reselect your main drive as the startup disk. Simply restart and your Mac will boot to the internal drive.Perform a Repair Permissions on your system when it has finished starting up.

Q: "The fonts in Safari and many other applications are a garbled mess, or Safari and other applications won't launch."

A: A common cause of applications not starting are corrupt fonts. But Helvetica Fractions in particular is known to causeproblems, as is Times Phonetic. Don't just disable these fonts in your font manager, but physically remove them fromyour system and try your applications again.

Determining if fonts are causing problems with applications:

This can be difficult, as the problem could be related to fonts, preference files, system files, or a combination of thethree.

1) First, move all fonts in the /Library/Fonts/ and the ~/Library/Fonts/ folders to a new folder on the desktop. If youhave pared your fonts down to the minimal list above, this will leave only the basic fonts active in the/System/Library/Fonts/ folder, listed above in section one. If your applications are still having problems, you then needto determine if the problem is damaged system fonts or preference files. To do so, open the System Preferences. Clickon the Accounts icon and create a new user account. Login to that account and run the applications you are havingtrouble with. If they are still not operating, then it is likely that your system fonts are damaged, or possibly the OS. Yournext least intrusive step is reinstalling the fonts using the method below in Reinstalling your fonts, or obtaining themfrom another Mac or external drive using one of the methods above. If after that your applications are still notfunctioning, then other basic OS system files are damaged, which only a reinstall of the OS can repair.

2) If your applications are now working correctly, then the preference files in your original user account may bedamaged. There is no easy way to fix this, either. At least not one that will keep you from losing all of your individualpreferences for each application. But put most simply, open the Preferences folder in your user account and move

everything in that folder to a new empty folder on your desktop so the original is empty. Restart your Mac and login toyour normal account. When the Mac is ready, you can remove the new account you made for testing in the first step ifyou tried that.

At this point, everything about your desktop will look as it did when you first installed OS X. The Dock, your desktopimage, everything. For those applications that need certain preferences present to avoid having to reinstall them, youcan try copying those particular preferences back from the folder you created on your desktop containing your originalpreference files and see if they work. If not, that preference file is damaged and you may need to reinstall theapplication. Others will simply let you reenter the serial number when it needs to create a new preference file.

You may ask why you wouldn't just reinstall the OS. It's because your preference files would still be damaged if youperformed an Archive and Install to preserve your settings. If you performed a clean install, then your preferences wouldbe gone and replaced with new ones. So you either will have accomplished nothing with an Archive and Install, sinceyour original damaged preference files will still be there, or you have put yourself at the same point you would be if youhad simply removed your preference files; except it took you a lot longer to do the latter because you did a completeclean reinstall of the OS rather than just empty the Preferences folder.

3) You can also move all user fonts to one location to determine if only fonts are the problem. Move all fonts in the/Library/Fonts/ and ~/Library/Fonts/ folders to a new folder on your desktop. If your applications run normally, thenone or more of your now disabled fonts is causing problems. It doesn't matter if the application uses a particular font ornot. A damaged font causes memory leaks and other memory related problems. Copy or move five fonts at a time intothe /Library/Fonts/ folder. If behavior problems return, then one or more of the fonts you reactivated are damaged.Replace as needed.

Reinstalling your fonts:

At times, fonts can be corrupted, or you may have accidentally deleted fonts you want to have on your system. It ispossible to restore your fonts without resorting to an Archive and Install, or Erase and Install of the OS.

First, download Pacifist. Insert the first OS installation CD or DVD. Start the utility and click on the "Open Mac OS XInstall Packages" button. Keep feeding the application the CDs or DVDs of your Snow Leopard, Leopard, Tiger or PantherInstall disks as it asks for them. If you have a set of DVDs that came with your Mac, the first disk should be the only oneyou need. After Pacifist has finished reading all of the packages, select the package that has the fonts you want installedand click the Install button on Pacifist's menu. Only that package will be installed to its default location. For a completeset of fonts, reinstall both the /System/Library/Fonts/ and /Library/Fonts/ folders. All fonts you install from Pacifist willoverwrite any identical fonts on your hard drive in the default locations, replacing any damaged fonts in the process. Ifyou have copied or moved any of the default fonts to another location, they will still be there and will need to be deletedmanually. All in all, this method is much quicker and easier than doing an entire reinstall of OS X to get your fonts backwhere they belong.

A word on Macs that shipped with Lion and Mountain Lion. These Macs do not come with any media for restoring theOS. You boot to the emergency partition by restarting and holding down Command+R. From there, you can restore theOS, or erase a drive and reinstall. A full install package for either of these OS's is 4GB in size. The entire hidden recoverypartition is only 650MB. That tells you right away that this is not an entire system. If you do an erase and install, asmuch of the OS as can be will be installed from the recovery partition. The rest will be downloaded from Apple's serversand installed.

I wanted to see what fonts could be restored from the recovery partition. The result is that they are in a hidden .dmgfile. In that disk image is a folder named /System/Library/Fonts/Base/. Of the 245 fonts Mountain Lion ships with, only51 fonts are in this folder. This one folder is actually a combination of some fonts which normally go into the/System/Library/Fonts/ folder, and others in the /Library/Fonts/ folder. It's not easy to get to. You need to first modifyDisk Utility's preferences so it will show hidden partitions so you can mount the Recovery drive. Then run a Terminalcommand to show hidden files and folders. It's not something a novice should attempt, so I'm not going to explain theprocess. There are so few fonts to recover from there anyway, it isn't worth explaining.

So whenever you get the opportunity to download an entire 4GB Lion or Mountain Lion system through the App Store (asin a system update), do so. When the download finishes, it will want to install the OS. Immediately press Command+Qto quit the installer. You can then backup the full installer to a DVD, flash drive or external hard drive. Then you have itand can use the following instructions.

Font locations for Lion and Mountain Lion:

This is quite a bit different as Apple does not sell a CD or DVD for Lion or Mountain Lion. Lion is available on a flashdrive. Current word is that there will be no physical media for Mountain Lion. These instructions assume you copiedyour Lion or Mountain Lion download to a DVD or other location to save for future use. I haven't seen a flash driveversion of Lion, so can't comment on how that may work.

Right click on the Lion or Mountain Lion installer and choose Show Package Contents. Double click the Contents folder,and then the SharedSupport folder. Double click the file InstallESD.dmg to open the disk image. A disk image drive iconwill appear on the desktop. Double click the desktop icon to open it. In the resulting window, double click the Packagesfolder. Open the Essentials.pkg with Pacifist. You can do this by dragging and dropping the .pkg file onto Pacifist'sinterface.

For the System folder fonts, expand Contents of Essentials.pkg > System > Library > Fonts and highlight the folder"Fonts" by clicking on it once. Click "Install" at the upper left of the Pacifist window.

For the Library folder fonts, expand Contents of Essentials.pkg > Library > Fonts and highlight the folder "Fonts" byclicking on it once. Click "Install" at the upper left of the Pacifist window.

Font locations for the Leopard and Snow Leopard retail disks:

For the System folder fonts, expand Contents of OSInstall.mpkg > Contents of EssentialSystemSoftware > Contents ofEssentialSystemSoftwareGroup > Contents of BaseSystem.pkg > System > Library > Fonts and highlight the folder"Fonts" by clicking on it once. Click "Install" at the upper left of the Pacifist window.

For the Library folder fonts, expand Contents of OSInstall.mpkg > Contents of EssentialSystemSoftware > Contents ofEssentialSystemSoftwareGroup > Contents of Essentials.pkg > Library > Fonts and highlight the folder "Fonts" byclicking on it once. Click "Install" at the upper left of the Pacifist window.

The Additional Fonts are in two separate locations. Expand Contents of OSInstall.mpkg > Contents ofAdditionalFonts.pkg > Library > Fonts, or Contents of OSInstall.mpkg > Contents of AdditionalFonts.pkg > System >Library > Fonts, depending on the set of additional fonts you want to restore.

Font locations for the Tiger retail disks:

For the System folder fonts, expand Contents of OSInstall.mpkg > Contents of BaseSystem.pkg > System > Library andhighlight the folder "Fonts" by clicking on it once. Click "Install" at the upper left of the Pacifist window.

For the Library folder fonts, expand Contents of OSInstall.mpkg > Contents of Essentials.pkg > Library and highlight thefolder "Fonts" by clicking on it once. Click "Install" at the upper left of the Pacifist window.

Fonts locations for the bundled Tiger and retail Panther disks:

For the System folder fonts, expand Contents of OSInstall.mpkg > Contents of EssentialSystemSoftware.mpkg >Contents of BaseSystem.pkg > System > Library and highlight the folder "Fonts" by clicking on it once. Click "Install" atthe upper left of the Pacifist window.

For the Library folder fonts, expand Contents of OSInstall.mpkg > Contents of EssentialSystemSoftware.mpkg >Contents of Essentials.pkg > Library and highlight the folder "Fonts" by clicking on it once. Click "Install" at the upperleft of the Pacifist window.

You will also find a main package named Contents of Fonts.mpkg. You do not need to restore these fonts unless youhave need of the extended set of Asian and foreign language fonts. Also, you can expand each "Fonts" folder in Pacifistto select individual fonts if you only want to restore one, or a few.

Conclusion: Tracking down and eliminating all of the duplicate fonts on your system will allow you to use yourPostScript versions through Font Book, Suitcase, MasterJuggler, FontAgent Pro or other font manager withoutinterference from other versions automatically given higher priority by OS X, and should then appear properly in all ofyour applications.

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